


Istan Quetë

by RaisingCaiin



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Biting, Codependency, Dirty Talk, Doublespeak, Dubious Consent, Dubiously Consensual Blow Jobs, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Explicit Sexual Content, Extremely Dubious Consent, First Time, Gaslighting, God Complex, Guilt-tripping, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Mutilation, Near Death, Near Death Experiences, Necrophilia, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Second Person, Panic Attacks, Rape, Re-Education, Reading, Rough Sex, Self-Doubt, Self-Sacrifice, Sexual Abuse, Starvation, Stockholm Syndrome, Touch-Starved, Unreliable Narrator, i mean besides my sins, ooh boy here we go, suffocation, why is there even a tag for that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-18
Updated: 2017-06-23
Packaged: 2018-10-20 09:42:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10659936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaisingCaiin/pseuds/RaisingCaiin
Summary: In a ruined city, there stands a beautiful palace, and in this beautiful palace, there abides a kind god.This kind god has a wondrous set of rooms that he has gifted to his beloved, and in the wondrous rooms that he has gifted to his beloved, there is a set of books - books, it seems, that list all the words in all the world.Words of old, words that are new, words for things that you had never even considered before. . .And you (for yes, you are the beloved in this tale, as unexpected and inexplicable as such fortune is), you read these books. You do not read quickly, but you do read. And you may not learn quickly, but -you do learn.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A tremendous thank-you to everyone who liked and commented on the Tumblr snapshots of this story - you know who you are :) 
> 
> Title is a phrase in Quenya, “I can/know how to speak” but literally "I have learned language."
> 
> Tags will be updated with each chapter.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **From aina- (v., “to hallow, bless, treat as holy”) to caila (adj.,"lying in bed, bedridden, sickness")**

**From _aina_ \- (v., “to hallow, bless, treat as holy”) to _caila_ (adj.,"lying in bed, bedridden, sickness")**

 

You don’t see him enter, at first. You rarely do.

“What are you doing, my pet?” His right arm winds around your waist and his left arm sneaks beneath yours, his hand hooking the corner of a page and flipping it idly. “What is this?”

Carefully, carefully, you pull the book away from his reach, placing it gently back upon the shelf where you’d found it. You leave it open. He lets you.

“Nothing, now that you are here.” You turn to face him, moving little so as not to dislodge his arms, and oh, the smile that you find waiting for you upon the turn! Your dear friend always looks upon you as though you are the most precious thing that he possesses.  

“Why, you flattering little _minx_.” You’ve never heard anything quite so wonderful of said creature to explain this epithet, but given how often Annatar uses it, you imagine that the humble minx must actually be quite valuable. “I was simply curious why you were thumbing through a lexical reader, of all things.”

Actually, there is no reason why you had picked up that particular book, out of the many beautiful but dusty volumes that grace the shelves here - nothing beyond curiosity, that is, as you’d wondered, idly, whether you were able to read. You were, as it turned out, and you’d spent a wonderful afternoon learning odd and wonderful words - some you'd thought you half-remembered, others you had certainly never encountered before - with increasing fascination for the way that so many combinations of random _sound_ had such complicated _meaning!_

But this is difficult to explain, so you simply shrug, and hum with pleasure as your friend leans his head forward to lay it upon your shoulder. You lower your head to rest atop his, and your arms come up to encircle him in turn. You embrace.

It is perfect.

“I did not know what it was,” you admit, already half forgetting that he was asking about the book – this ‘lexicon.’ “But I grew bored, waiting for you, and I thought to explore the chambers you have given me.”

“Mmmm.” He hums in contentment, and you can feel the vibration, slight but steady, rumble through his head and hair soft beneath your cheek. “And are they to your liking, your rooms?”

“Very much,” you tell him, though this poor phrase falls utterly short of describing the chambers’ actual opulence – Annatar has given you what feels like half a wing of what seems to be a palace. There are three entire rooms dedicated to your convenience: one for sleeping, one for talking, and one simply for standing by your door and greeting visitors. “I love the hearth, and it is cozy, here.” The fireplace, which is in your main chamber, is roomy enough to fit two elves lying side by side, and the walls throughout the suite are solid stone beneath vivid tapestries. You even have three whole windows: two in your sleeping chambers, one facing north and one facing east, and another in your main chamber, facing south.

There is no window facing west.

“The view, though. . .” You trail off there, not wishing to seem ungrateful, but Annatar sidesteps the impending awkwardness gracefully, picking up the conversation with no indication that he is offended by your unappreciative dismissal. How you appreciate his thoughtfulness of you!

“And the view leaves something to be desired, I realize. I apologize, pet.” With a quick kiss to your collarbone, he raises his head and slips from your arms; you cannot stifle a wounded noise as he leaves you to go and stand by the window, silhouetted against the dying daylight. “In time, though, we will be able to leave this place, and all will be well. I will build for you better rooms, create for you a better view, and you shall never want for anything again.”

It sounds like a dream, but –

“Leave? Why would you leave?” You follow him to the window – the one facing south, this is, not east into the smoke or north into the ruins of some fair city, and certainly not west, like the window you have only glimpsed out in the hall when Annatar comes in to you – a window that must, you imagine, look out toward a horizon where the sun sets each evening in a blaze of blood-crimson-gold.

Not that you have ever witnessed such a marvel. Though you imagine it must be glorious.

“My work here is done,” Annatar tells you patiently, turning so that the beautiful long fingers of his tender right hand can slide with ease beneath your chin. Although his tone is patient, you wince at the gentle notice that your head injury has apparently caused you to forget something important again. This is not the first time you have had this conversation, then. 

“And I want to take you home with me, this time,” he adds, and your left hand, the slightly-more-healed one, flies to the sill to clutch at the hard stone for support. This is new information. You are certain you would remember this, if you had been told it before.

Head injury or no head injury.

“Annatar?”

“Mmmm?”

He looks tired, gazing out into the south again, and you feel a rush of gratitude that he still takes the time to come and visit you, night after night, even after all the work he is doing, trying to rebuild the ruined city you can see through the haze when you peer from your northernmost window.

“You – you will not leave me here?” you ask, and you hate how uncertain you sound, but – you _are_ uncertain. That is one conversation you will never lose – how Annatar had told you that you were the one, in your stubbornness and your pride, to level the city that even now he is trying so hard to rebuild. Given your apparent propensity for destruction – and the amount of aggravation it has likely caused your dearest friend, who has stopped to care for you despite greater objectives – you find it unfathomable that he would even consider moving you anywhere else.

That he would even consider taking you with him.

But when he turns to look at you, his beautiful face momentarily twisted with disgust, you are surprised - and warmed - to learn that this disgust is not really for you, but for your question.

“Of course I would not leave you here, my sweet!” He draws you into another embrace, tight and fierce, and you cling to him, embarrassed at your own insecurity but delighted by his vehemence. “No matter how many difficulties you cause me, I – I care for you, Tyelpe.”  

It is a welcome reminder, though no longer much needed. You know that he cares for you; this much you do remember, and always can, and always will. When you were finally able to open your eyes again, Annatar had been there. Waiting. Wringing his hands at your bedside, he had been the one to tell you, his voice cracking, of your fall from a wet step, and how the impact to your head had left you gravely injured.

The extent of your injuries had certainly borne out the depth and severity of that fall. Although Annatar had spoken to you softly, had had his men shutter the sickrooms to blot out all searing light and noise, your head had hurt so treacherously that you could barely distinguish light from dark. Your chest had rattled with every breath; you had coughed and coughed at the slightest provocation, your lungs heaving against the constriction of your ribs; you could not move from your back for several days. And perhaps worst of all, your hands were sadly mangled, from where Annatar said you had thrown them up to protect your skull during your fall. The stone of the step had crushed them badly, even breaking several bones – which, when you had woken, had been poking through your skin like ribs from a corpse. 

An odd image, and one of which you’re not entirely certain the source, but all the same: fitting. And although they have improved, your hands still are not completely healed. Even turning a page pains you, sometimes. 

And Annatar must be remembering something of those terrible first few days again too, for his embrace tightens further and you can feel his breath, hot and sweet, at the base of your throat. “Never again, Tyelpe – never again, _ever_. I came too close to losing you once.”

You sigh. It is a noise of contentment, but your friend chuckles from his place against your chest, still maintaining your embrace. Still holding you close, and safe, and tight.

“Am I keeping you from something, sweetness?”

“No,” you say, and it is true. Your reading was not truly that important – your own curiosity at the meaning of words can wait out whatever Annatar needs from you, to assure him that you are alive, that you survived your terrible fall.

But eventually he releases you, and after rising briefly to his toes to give you a brief peck of affection to the forehead, he steps back out into the greeting room and then the hall, calling for someone as he goes.

With nothing better to do, you return to your book. The lexicon. It is still open to the page where you had stopped when Annatar first came in; you are able to find your previous place with little effort. You trace your fingers down the list of symbols, marveling at the way these elegant lines resolve themselves into connotations, denotations, meanings, _song_.  

Annatar seems slightly less amused when he finds you seated at the window sill, reading again, upon his return. “Still indulging in lexical curiosity, pet?”

“Mmm?” You look up, blinking slowly as your mind readjusts from the implied richness of the tattered page to the textural depth of the world beyond it, but even then, you cannot miss that he is frowning.

Not at you, of course. At your book.

“Is the long-banned tongue of the blasphemous Noldor so curious to you that I no longer merit a greeting?” he asks. He smiles as he says it, though, and you realize that this must be one of his ever-present jests, a favored spice of conversation. He has not been gone long, after all, had barely even _left_ your chambers, so this cannot be a serious complaint. Maybe the play is in the word "Noldor" - not a term you recognize - or in the insinuation of blasphemy, for what is so harmful about reading?

So although you do not see the humor in his words, you smile up at him all the same. For one should overlook his friend’s missteps, yes? Especially if it is one’s own fault for not understanding, for creating the disharmony in the first place, yes?

But Annatar does not return your smile. Instead he shakes his head, and a slender hand comes to lie across the top of your book.

“Oh, my Tyelpe. Always sticking your pretty nose into something a little too far beyond you.”

There, that is definitely a jest! Though, sadly, still not one that you quite understand. Your grin only grows wider at Annatar’s teasing.

But his frown only deepens.

 “Are you cold, pet?” Concern colors his voice.

“No?” By contrast with the dismal, smoky world you can see from both your east window and your north, it is always pleasantly warm in your chambers.

“Then why are you wearing this?” Annatar presses, plucking somewhat fretfully at the sheet that you have arranged across yourself, falling down one shoulder and across your chest and lap to cover most of your body.

“I – have found no clothes?” you tell him, baffled enough that you phrase this statement as a question. “I am well enough to leave my bed, Annatar, yes? So I thought I had best get in the habit of making myself modest again!”

But this line, with its intent as the next salvo in your ongoing banter, falls flat when Annatar only frowns more deeply still.

“Sweetness, your modesty is nothing compared to your recovery and wellbeing.” His voice resonates with his quiet concern. “Stand, stand.”

He pulls you to your feet when you do not respond right away. “There –“ the sheet slides from your shoulder, and he pulls it away from your torso with some impatience “ – turn for me –“ the movement loosens the hasty knot you’d tied at your waist, and his slender fingers make quick work of the rest of it “ – and there. Much better.” You are naked again, the sheet pooled at your feet where you stand and the dim light of the dying day warming your back from the window facing south.

You are besieged by a sudden urge to hold your book before your body. To shield yourself, though from whom or what you could not explain, not even if your life depended on it.

Annatar, if he notices this odd little twitch, is gracious enough not to mention it. “Is there some reason why my recommendations for your health so displease you, all of a sudden?” He pries your book from your hands – gently, so gently – and lays it atop the sill where you had been seated upon his arrival only moments before. There is nothing between your body and him, now, save his robes.

In all the days since you had awoken again, this has never registered with you as it does now.

“Tyelpe?” Annatar asks quietly, and oh, how his love for you shines in his mouth’s formation of your name! Diminutive made pledge and splendor of the giver, these three newest and softest, most tender of syllables. In gratitude, you lower your mouth to his and kiss him.

 _This_ you have surely done before. _This_ you must remember, _this_ you could never forget! The taste of him is sweet, and the scent of him sweeter yet; the feel of him beneath your lips is soft, and warm, and when you pull your mouth from his, the sound that he releases is just as soft, but warmer still. And when you open your eyes and look down upon him, his eyes are closed, though slowly his mouth stretches, the smallest glimpse of flashing white teeth glinting as he smiles.

“My precious,” he whispers. His eyes do not open. “How I love you. How I have always loved you!”

He does not push you, though; he does not move. He leaves it up to you to back him away from the window, away from the sun – out of your main chambers, into your sleeping room. His eyes do not open; he trusts you to direct him, to guide him. The smile leaves his mouth, but only so that he can shape words with it instead; you can see that the smile is still there, echoed in every plane of his face, as he whispers again and again how he loves you. You are cheered, and warmed, and yes, emboldened by such tokens; you stoop again and again to his mouth, stopping his words with your kisses. And still his eyes do not open; still he gasps his endearments, whenever in your ravenousness you leave his mouth free.

And when finally the backs of his knees impact with your bed, when finally his eyes do open again and they fall upon you, you find that you are pinned by his gaze, for all that you are ever so slightly the taller. Hot and heavy his eyes shine, with devotion and wonder and admiration and lust, and these things are for you.

These things are all for you.

“What have I done to deserve you?” you wonder, no longer surprised that the words fall from your mouth whether you will them or not.

“Nothing,” he says, and the weight of his gaze never falters, though your eyes are drawn away to watch his fine hands, which have risen to the neck of his robes, have begun twisting at the buttons of the lower layer that rises up to his throat from the collar low upon his breast. “Nothing, my precious, and yet, here I am.”

You cannot look away. Your eyes follow his fingers as they unhook one button and then the next, then the next. You forget even to kiss him. You have done nothing to deserve this. “Annatar!” There is nothing you can do, can have _ever_ done, to deserve this.

“Tyelpe.” His fingers never falter. You imagine that he is still looking at you, at your face; you cannot even look up to see. “My sweet one, my precious. My all.” The buttons are undone. He has reached the collar of his overrobe, a single piece worn over his shoulders and pulled tight about the front; there remains only a sash at his waist to part upper layer from lower. He hesitates there, as if uncertain this is what you want.

You place your hand atop his and tug. Petulantly. You want, yes, you want – oh how you want!

There is a small inelegant snort from somewhere above you – for still your eyes follow his hands, and you have not looked up – but obligingly, he pulls his sash apart. You grunt, impatient, and he laughs, raising your hands to his shoulders and placing them upon the folds of soft, white cloth.

“Pull, Tyelpe,” he prompts you; “pull it from me.” There is still a shadow of laughter in his beautiful voice, and for this more than anything else you finally look back up to his eyes – where you find that the weight of them is diminished, though not the care, nor the fire. Somehow you find the courage to push his overrobes from his shoulders.

Ever the giver he is, your friend – nay, your lover!

Annatar’s robes slide to the floor; they pool at his feet. Far more gracefully than your sheet had fallen about yours.

He slips from his underrobes; there is a shirt, and a pair of braies – endearingly practical – and then he is as bare as you, save the glimmer of red stones in his hair and the gleam of gold on his first finger.

“Well, love?” Annatar asks, amused, and you realize that you have not moved again save to stare. “Am I so repulsive to you that you will do nothing more?”

Your wonder at the gift that you are being offered has left you without any of the new words that your book may have taught you earlier this day. Instead you breathe his name, and only his name, as you descend to kiss him once more.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **From cáma (n., “guilt, responsibility”) to ecces- (v., “to find out, bring out by examining”)**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New tags have been added - please be aware!

**From _cáma_ (n., “guilt, responsibility”) to _ecces_ \- (v., “to find out, bring out by examining”)**

 

“Tyelpe! Where are you, sweetling?”

You are in your sleeping chamber, where you have been reading by turns, and dozing by others, at the window facing north. The day has flowed like honey – slow when you watched its movements, but quick as soon as you looked away – and you feel energized with all you have learned between sunup and sundown.

“Tyelpe? I have brought you a gift, my love!”

Well, and energized by the imminent presence of your lover, too. A gift, eh – as if his presence were not gift enough in itself! You smile as you stand from your seat, closing your book, the latest volume of the lexicon, as you go. How easily these new endearment falls from Annatar’s mouth – “my love” and “beloved” are all but your second and third names now, though the much-tried “minx” still holds its favor.

Soon, you hope, you will encounter some new word in your readings that can even begin to describe the feelings that Annatar stirs in you.

“Tyelpe?”

You can see now, though, why he had called you a minx, before. He has been good enough to explain, kindly, how you were tempting him, with your nakedness, and how it was all he could do to wait until you were at least beginning to heal before asking whether you had actually _meant_ your advances upon his person.

How you had blushed at this revelation! But you are grateful that your lasciviousness had not driven him off – that he had understood you were still healing, and would not ordinarily act so wantonly toward such a dear friend.

“Tyelpe? Tyelpe!”

“In here, Annatar!” You place your book atop the sill, but wonder, even as he appears in the doorway, whether this will be far enough. He is not displeased that you are reading – he is not, he has said he is not – but he worries; you can tell. And although you understand his concern, you do not want him to remove the books from your chambers, out of a misplaced fear for the strain that such voracious reading could place upon your still-recovering health.

“Beloved!” He sweeps forward to greet you, and you bound forward to embrace him – you collide halfway. You sweep him into an embrace, and laughing, he permits you – to enfold him in your arms, to nuzzle into his hair, to breathe in the scent of him. If he does not care for being subjected to such physical signs of affection, he makes no sign of it that you can discern. You embrace him harder in gratitude.

He is half-clothed today; no overrobes, just the underrobe and the layers beneath. He comes to you this way, some days; others, fully outfitted, and others still, in only the shirt and braies. All are soft, and white, and warm to your touch, but if not for his men, or the palace staff – whom you have not seen since you woke, you realize – then, you imagine fondly, he would not wear any of these when he comes to you at all.

He prefers to be naked around you. As naked as he has asked that you remain.

It is not so great a hardship, really. You had tried, one more time, to fashion a vestment from a sheet from your bed, but Annatar had been agitated upon seeing it; understanding of your vague inclination toward covering at least your genitals, he said, but distraught at the coarseness of the fabric on your still-healing skin. He had promised to bring you proper garments later, and the fact that he still has not is all your own doing; you had distracted him then, with your kisses.

As you distract him now, you suspect – kissing him full upon his beautiful mouth, and as long and as hot as he will permit of you.

But Annatar has come to you in an especially pleased frame of mind today though, it seems. He does not remark upon your book on the windowsill, where just today you have reached all the words of a new letter, or the state of disarray that is your bed, where just last night you had tossed and turned without rest for the fevered dreams of fire, and blood, and tools of iron.   

It is the injury to your head, he has explained, that gives you such false visions. They cannot harm you, he promises – he will not let them. Much as you are grateful for his assurances, though, you have not noticed any decrease in the dreams. If anything, they grow fiercer as the nights pass, and more fiery still when Annatar is not present.

Ah, well. He is here now, is he not?

 “Mmmm.” He does not gasp for breath as you do when your mouths part, but he does smile, slow and sweet and sated. “You are not curious about what I bring you, beloved?”

“You bring me yourself,” you tell him honestly. “And that is enough for me.”

“Such honeyed words, my Tyelpe! Perhaps something _does_ come of your perusing those dull lexicons with such undivided fervor.” Ah. So he did notice your book. Well, at least he does not seem unhappy about it? He pushes at your arms, and regretfully, you release him. “But still. Myself aside, I made you this.”

Emboldened by his smile, you take the shining length from his beautiful hands and examine it closely. It is an exquisite gold chain, its links as fine and shining as anything you have ever seen, save only the ring on his first finger. It is aesthetically pleasing, even to your utterly untrained eye. But-

“It is most pleasing, in color and in form – I thank you for such a princely gift!” Marveling at its strength, you hold the end of the chain first to your wrist, then to your neck – both places where you imagine that he would deem your healing skin mended enough to bear even such a small weight – but it seems far too long for either. “But, Annatar – where am I meant to wear it?”

“Silly creature.” He touches his nose to yours briefly, fondly, before lifting the chain from your hands and kneeling, in a swift and graceful motion, at your feet. He drapes one end of it about your left ankle, and by some apparatus that you had not observed when you held it – and still cannot see now, how is he doing this? You are gripped by an odd need to puzzle out the mechanics – he snaps the chain quite decisively shut.

You lift your foot, and turn it back and forth, as he rises to his own feet. He watches, amused, as you discover the pleasing weight of your adornment and the beautiful chiming noise that it makes at even the slightest of motions. He smiles with pleasure at your laughter.

“Annatar, it is beautiful! A feast for all the senses.” You lower your foot back to the floor of your chamber and reach for him again. He comes to you willingly, and allows you to enfold him once more. It is silly, you know, but when he is away, supervising the rebuilding of his ruined city, you feel the absence – of other spirits, other bodies, other _people_ – most acutely.

But he has returned now, and you are no longer alone with the vicious vicissitudes of temperature – your cold empty head and the searing hot visions that rise to fill it, the cold dry books and the lovely warm words that you draw from them, all too often in vain.

Not that you could reasonably expect him to stay and keep you, the confirmed destroyer of an entire city, company, with so much else and much better demanding his time. It is quite astonishing enough that he returns to you every night.

 “What is the occasion, though?” you wonder about the bangle. He laughs again, and shifts in your arms, and – ah. It seems he has decided that he wants more than just an embrace from you tonight. You would rather just stay as you are, and talk, and laugh, but this decision is not yours to make. You release him and follow him to the bed when he beckons. 

“The occasion?” He pats at the coverlet, and you take a seat as he bids, your eyes following him appreciatively as he sheds his garments, leaving them folded neatly atop the window sill – and by extension, your book – on his way to fetch a small vial of oil from the bureau by the door.

“For such a magnanimous gift,” you tell him, your hands rising to rest on his hips as he comes to stand before you again, unstoppering the vial.

“Need I an occasion to gift my beloved the smallest of trinkets?” he asks, indulgently, and you nip gently at his belly for the courteous but unrevealing answer.

“You need for nothing, least of all from me,” you tell him, laughing, as he shoves your shoulder playfully. You topple back across the bed, still laughing, and he crawls up beside you, shaking his head at your impertinence. “But I can admit that I am curious all the same.”

“Then I will tell you, little minx – there is no occasion,” he says, mock-growling as he settles astride you. Your hands find his hips again as he straightens above you, and pride warms your spirit at the sight of him, so tall and fair and shining. And in part it is pride that you knew him in the long-ago before your unfortunate fall, yes, but – it is also pride that, even after, you apparently still offer enough of interest, intrigue, desire, for him to _stay_.

“No occasion at all?” you continue, a gasp shaking you to your core as he strokes you once, twice, three times, and then lifts himself off your body, settling at your side for a moment to slide his fingers lower still. You gasp again as he breaches you.

“Well,” he admits.

“Ngh.” They are always somewhat painful, these first few moments. You can bear them, though. You are proud. You are grateful. He has chosen you. He has stayed with you.

“Perhaps I was thinking, again, of your fall.” He twists his fingers, and a shout at the smart tears itself from your throat before you can stop it. “Of how little, how very little, I want to see such a horrible calamity repeated.” You moan your apology – for the accident? for the displeasing noises you cannot contain? – but he kisses at your throat in benediction, lipping at your pulse as though forgiving the slight. “Of how easily I might contrive a little thing, to help prevent such disaster in the future.”

And an ankle chain, no matter how over-measured, will prevent you from falling again? You have not the words to articulate this, not with his beautiful long fingers driving you half to distraction, but he must anticipate your bothersome need to ask questions.

“I am thinking that, if I fasten the other end to some heavy furnishing, you would be anchored against future catastrophe.” Another twist of his fingers leaves you shouting again, but nearly in approbation this time, and his mouth, his kisses, migrate from your throat to your cheek, then to your ear and your eyelid, before finally stopping to hover just above your mouth. You arch up to meet him, needing some other touch to ground you against the sting, but he pulls back just enough that you cannot quite reach him.

The whine you release at this sounds undignified even to you, but – it is well. He likes this. And you are proud. You are grateful.

His fingers never pause in their preparation of you.

“Are you even listening to me, sweet creature?” he asks in mock disapproval.

“Function – as well as – form,” you manage, struggling to reach his lips.

“Very good,” he says approvingly, and finally, finally, he leans down to kiss you. It is sweet, so sweet, but over too soon. You wind your arms around his neck as he moves back astride you, and you fight the urge to bury your face in his shoulders as he settles himself – he has told you that he prefers to see you. So you keep your eyes on him for as long as you can, and if you lose that battle as he pushes in, then at least he kisses the prominence in the center of your throat when you throw back your head to shout.

A word you learned earlier this day is _cáma._ It signifies guilt, responsibility. A fitting word, you think – you will take responsibility for your lover’s pleasure now, as you did not before.

For all the combined beauty and utility of your new bangle, your first day wearing it leaves you with the impression that it may prove somewhat cumbersome. The length of it – the very feature that Annatar had so cleverly devised to keep you from falling – limits your range of motion, since one end is secured around your angle and the other around your bedframe, as Annatar was struck with a fit of inspiration after your lovemaking last night. You find that you can reach the limits of your sleeping chamber, and its entry to your main chamber, and even the first of the shelves where your books are waiting for you – though the volume buried beneath Annatar’s clothes last night seems to have vanished, for some reason – but no further.

Worse, in testing these limits, you also spend the day tripping over the excess length. You are certain you must look like the clumsy, inept fool that you are, so you ensure that you are seated atop your bed by sundown, when Annatar usually comes to you. 

It doesn’t help, of course. He notices the bruising, and the way that your hands are bleeding again, some of the bones poking through once more, and from there the whole story comes out – the tripping, the minor falls, the pain. He castigates himself soundly for the oversight, and asks if you could bear a shorter chain?

Of course you could, you reassure him. But then, you wonder, how will you reach your other rooms?

He kisses your forehead – you had not stood to greet him as you normally would, the various pains of the day making themselves known with a vehemence – and admits that you might not be able to do so.

“But for me, the minor inconvenience would be worth the sacrifice if by extension it means that you cannot injure yourself any further. Do you not agree, pet?”

You cannot argue with such logic, so he corrects the length of your bangle then and there, vanishing away the excess through some process your mind cannot quite follow or observe. He bears your pestering about the mechanics of this process with good humor for a time, before bidding you hush and stand up to test it. When you stand now, you find, you trip no more, and that is good – though you are unreasonably saddened by the fact that you can no longer step beyond the threshold of your sleeping chamber either.

But it is all right; Annatar is here. And even as you rejoin him, you spare a moment to be pleased with your own foresight; for earlier this day, you moved the unread volumes to your sleeping chamber, and even now they lie beneath your bed. The knowledge that you can have all three – your books, your comfort, and your love – makes you groan with pleasure, even though your body still aches when Annatar sets himself astride you once more.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **From faila (adj., “fair-minded, just, generous”) to loicarë (n., “mistaken action”)**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New tags have been added - please be aware. . .

**From _faila_ (adj., “fair-minded, just, generous”) to** **_loicarë_** **(n., “mistaken action”)**

 

Days pass, and evenings follow – a third night, and a fourth. Or has it been more than that? It is difficult – no, impossible – to keep track.

But no matter! From your books you are learning many things, and Annatar, whether he appreciates your fumbling efforts or not, is ever the receptive audience of your forays into language both old and new.

 “Leave me the braies, perhaps?” you ask one night, when he has finished with you. From the way he had sighed, and stood, only moments before, you had guessed that this would be one of the many nights that he would not spend with you, but out on errands in his ever-quest to rebuild the city that you had ruined.

“You would have me appear before my men half-bare?” he asks you with great amusement, drawing on the garment in question even as he speaks. Even as you both chuckle at the absurdity of the thought, you realize with some embarrassment what a short-sighted boon it is that you have demanded.

Still. Stupid as the idea itself might have been, you knew the words that denoted the concepts that you were trying to communicate! Quietly, you are quite proud of yourself for this achievement.

“Yes, well, I can see how that might pose some challenge to your authority,” you tell Annatar, laughing with a touch of shame even as you struggle to rise from your back. You eventually content yourself with being propped on your elbows, as it becomes apparent that his pleasure this night has not left you with quite enough strength to sit all the way up.

He wrinkles his nose at you for the rejoinder, and you only laugh again. “Well, I wouldn’t have to ask if you would remember to bring me the garments you promised me!” For indeed he still has not remembered, and you have remained naked to greet him every night.

“Does your bangle count for so little, then?” he asks, coming back to stand beside the bed, to kiss you fondly as he runs his fingers through the links of gold at your ankle.

“Ngh. Hardly.” You gasp the words out between breaths, between kisses. “Seemly as it is, though, it does nothing to hide that which should remain intimate.”

“ _Should_ remain intimate?” He draws back at this, frowning. You fight once more to rise from your indolence, wondering why what you had thought was a logical argument has instead stopped his kisses, but he simply pushes you back down.

And back down you go.

“You know it is a matter of your continued recovery, sweet – I have told you this before,” Annatar says, in some vexation. “And yet – even were it not so crucial to your well-being, love, why would you need to hide anything of yourself from me?”

Oh. Is that how you have pained him? You would have thought twice before saying anything, had you realized that such a request might seem to be calling his love for you into question.

“I would conceal nothing from you,” you assure him. “Nothing. Not for any price.” And this must have been what he had hoped to hear, for his smile returns, and he dips back down to your level, pressing a kiss to your spent forehead before straightening up again.  

“I know you would not,” he says, stepping away from your bedside again. “Not now. But.” The slight distance does nothing to hide the pain in his voice as he goes. “You did so once before.”

Oh. You did?

He does not turn – he cannot bear to face you as he continues. Instead he sighs, and bends down to pick up his shirt. “And love, your concealment the last time then became the cause of all our misfortunes – your own pain not least, and also my expension of so much more effort than would have been truly necessary otherwise.”

 “Oh, my Tyelpe.” On his shirt goes; up come the buttons. “So much trouble, so much waste, so much _suffering_ that could all have been avoided if only you had never _concealed_ things from me! And yet, here you are, asking exactly the same of me all over again.” Oh. Is there no sin that you have not committed against your patient lover? “It is not _all_ your fault, pet, and certainly I would never fault you of such things now, after such a tremendous injury, but – I am only a flawed creature, after all. And the realization that nothing has changed – _void_ , my love, how that pains me.”

There – there is nothing you can say in response to such a revelation. Indeed, you are vaguely surprised that, given the obvious pain attached to these memories, Annatar has even trusted you enough to share more of the shared history that you have obviously forgotten. Even so, though – the hope, the conviction, the sheer _faith_ that he is placing in you is humbling, for how can he be sure that you won’t cock it all up a second time? 

You vow to yourself that you will scour your books, these precious lexicons, until you have learned all that there is good and pure and worthwhile to know. You will determine what might have gone wrong, in the life and the love that you had before, and address the root of that wrong now before it can hurt Annatar all over again.  

But in the meantime, your silly mouth runs away once more. “Perhaps your shirt, then?”

Annatar still has his back to you, is in the very act of drawing his lower robe closed across his shoulders, when you blurt out this question. Even from across the room you can hear his quiet intake of breath – can only imagine how he must hear the impertinence of this repeated request, the very _gall_ of your timing when he has only just laid his spirit bare to you.

There is a moment of dreadful stillness as your mind catches up with your mouth and attempts to wrestle it into submission. “Ai, Annatar, I apologize-“ all right, fair enough, good “-for such an ill-timed jest.”

Ai. That is it, then, for this was no jest, and you know that as well as Annatar does. You deserve whatever is coming to you.

_Faila_ is a word you learned today. “Fair-minded,” it signifies – “just” and “generous.”

It is a most apt description of Annatar, for even in his well-warranted anger he is generous beyond anything that you deserve. He touches not your hands, for they are still healing; nor your head, for you do require it even if it is the means by which you continue to provoke him; nor your genitals, for if they were overly damaged then he could not give you pleasure by them later. Nor does he do anything that will not heal by the morning.

Most likely.  

And when it is done, his kiss to the crown of your head is gentle, so gentle. “Is it not unseemly, my treasure, to bargain with your lover for trifles? And your vehemence pains me, for I would deny you nothing, but – how am I to fulfill your wishes when that fulfillment only leads us down dark roads we are best served avoiding?”

Your throat is scraped and raw, your voice most certainly harsh and unlovely. You cannot quite acknowledge this wisdom in the terms it deserves.

“Hush, my love – let yourself rest. Shhhh.” A long, slender-fingered hand slides down the front of your throat, and oh its blessed coolness against your fevered skin! Elsewhere you can feel the welcomeness of water, clean and cool, and the softness of new cloth. He dabs your brow, and the scent of blood diminishes as he then attends to your belly, your legs, your rear.

 “If you must have a token of me, though – some proof that I will not abandon you as you once did me – then yes, of course, my shirt is yours.” You whimper as the coolness of both cloth and hand are removed and Annatar stands, but you are even less able to rise from your bed now than you had been only two turns of the glass earlier. Instead you can only watch, tears of shame scalding your cheeks, as your lover removes his dirtied robe, revealing the still-pristine white shirt beneath it – and then turns back to you with the gift so unfairly demanded of him.  

_Faila_. Generous, just, fair. You will read twice as much tomorrow, to see what else you might learn.

With an arm beneath your back, Annatar lifts you as though you are a shred of cloth to be laundered. Your arms and neck are slack, and you lack the strength to help him left them, but he manages to lay his shirt out beneath you and lower you back down upon it all the same. His fingers are swift and nimble as he threads your limp arms through the sleeves that had clothed his own arms moments before, and again as he does up some few of the buttons that will hold the garment about your body, thus completing the ill-gained concealment that you have wrested from him in the misbegotten name of false modesty.

Stars, you are sorry. But the shirt is soft, and cool, and when you can stand again, you intend to see if it will reach low enough to cover at least the top of your groin.

If it does not, though, then that will be that. You have caused quite enough difficulty as it is.

“Thank you,” you whisper, as Annatar stands again and resumes his dressing. On anyone else – _to_ anyone else – the combination of stained lower robe, gaping overrobe, no shirt, and splattered braies would look ill and disreputable. On Annatar, though, what would otherwise be unseemly, disordered, is simply further proof of his devotion to you.

His smile is benevolent and radiant as the sun you cannot always see from your northernmost window – the only window you have left to you – when he bends again to kiss you: a good-evening and a good-night and a fare-you-well all at once. But your body rouses, a little, with the brush of his hand at your flank, and he breaks away to look down upon you with something like astonishment.

His shirt is soft and sweet-smelling about your shoulders, across your chest.

“Tyelpe, my sweet. Still you stir for me?”

You do, it seems. And so too, it seems, that as tired as he must be – as distressed for his pain as you are, you truly are – there is still more that you would demand of him.

You do not moan when he takes you in hand. You do not.

“You do not know what you are asking of me,” he says, quietly. Up and down smooths his hand; up and down, up and down, up and down. “I am a god, Tyelpe; I do not tire, I need not rest. And as my love for you is infinite, so too can be any means by which you demand that I prove this to you. More interminable than you would prove able to bear, certainly.”

“Ngh.” You – you could die from his touch, you are certain of it!

“I tell you this not to burden you with any needless concern for proper reciprocation, love – far from it! – but simply in explanation of why I will not love you again, tonight, as you wish of me.” He has not oiled his hand, and the increasing roughness of his touch burns with all the heat of his ardor. “But some other night, when you are rested – ah, then! Shall I spell it out for you, my love? Have you progressed far enough with re-learning the ill-gotten tongue of your iniquitous forebears, that I might tell you what I would have of you, did you let me?”

Stars, he knows that you still have your books. How did he know that you still have your books?

“No? You have not quite re-assimilated the tongue of the First-born – the Self-Righteous, the Fearful, the Hated?” Up and down his hand still goes; up and down, up and down, up and down. How your body strains for him, how loudly it cries that it wants! “A shame, truly – the tongue of the self-proclaimed High always seemed such an added luster to the pleasures that its speakers so inanely denied themselves. But no matter! The tongue of the Green, the Second-born, the City of the Smiths serves well enough in our case, eh?”

“Ngh.” You do not care what language he speaks in, so long as he grants you release and relief! “Nnngh!”

“There is that settled, then.” He takes a seat beside you once more; his hand never stops in its course along your length. “Some night, love, your hands and your ribs and your lungs will be well enough again for you to take my body. Thus far I have cared for you, loved you, and loved you well, but you would not flinch from the opportunity to do alike, would you?”

Stars, stars, stars, _stars_. . .

“I thought not. Oh, my love. . .”

Something like a shout tries to tear itself from your throat as the motion of his hand changes. But at least he has not tried to enter you again – you are not sure how well you could accommodate him, after earlier.

“And I would not mind if you try and surprise me, some night. Just because you cannot, does not mean that your effort is unpleasing! You will have to lay me out atop this very bed – I will not go down without _some_ struggle, but I will let you win, in the end – and climb atop me. It would please me to watch you, to see how eager you are for me, how careful of my body you are as you prepare it – as if I were one of your kind, truly, and could actually be discomfited by a few knocks to the flesh.” A kiss is brushed to the top of your head. “My sweet, silly thing.”

His hand never slows, never stops, and you burn, you burn. . . 

“I imagine that you would press your knee between these legs, love, wouldn’t you. Very well, then – spread them wide, pet, for they and everything between them are for you! I know that you will insist upon oil, and time, and all the tiresome mundanities of petting and muttering that you deem necessary to prepare the flesh, so I will humor you, but - only for so long, sweetling! Use your fingers, if you wish – use your mouth, use your tongue, I care not! – but come to me. Enter my body. Take it. I wear it for you. It is utterly yours.”

Perhaps – perhaps it is better that he uses a language you recognize, and not the one that you are still learning. For as tired as you are, as unable as you are to give him what he desires right this moment, it is good that at least you know what a gift you are being granted – the third of this night.

“You should be able to handle the rest, I hope. You should know, or at least soon remember, how to bend the knees forward, how to lift the legs as high as you please – how to hold the hips down, how to thrust into the core, and how to do so again and again and again until you are satisfied.” You are gone, you are done.

You are done. 

He wipes his sullied hand clean upon your coverlet as you pant and pant. “Think you well of that, my love?”

If after everything else, he would still offer you such a priceless and unmerited and unmatchable thing, how could you do other than think well of it?Tears of gratitude sting your eyes and streak your face as you struggle to stay awake.

“Good night, my love,” Annatar says, softly, with a kiss to your grimy brow. From the depths of half-drowsing, you wonder that he can even bear to touch you, sweaty and soiled as you are, but he is generous to the last. “I do hope that no irritation comes of it, but – I admit that you do look well in my shirt.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow, this turned out almost twice as long as the earlier ones, which means - yep, some new tags. Please be aware. . .

**From _maica_ (adj., "sharp, piercing") t _o nir_ \- (v., "press, thrust, force in a given direction")  **

****

Then there comes a night in which Annatar does not come to you at all, and you are left utterly alone.

It is a relief, at first, as sorry as you are to admit it – you do not know how you could have managed to satisfy your lover had he come to you again with such intensity, so soon following the last time. But as the day passes, and then the evening comes, and still you do not hear his familiar step, your sordid relief morphs into concern.

Is he well? Has there been some disruption in his command, his repair-work?

But still, it is pleasant to spend the next day, an entire day, reading. It is pleasant to turn the sheets over, that you need not sit atop the dry crust that has formed on the other side, and to tuck your lover’s shirt around you as though it were a blanket. It is pleasant, even, to be alone save for the intrigue of words spilling in all their great bounty from the musty old pages of your latest volume.

It is less pleasant to spend a second night entirely alone.

Has – has he left you?  Has he returned to his Fragrant City, or turned to someone else, a lover elsewhere who can satisfy him better, who will not demand of him the unreasonable?

Another night passes.

Is he hurt, you wonder, after being distracted by your overbearing demands? _Ai_ , stars – what if he fell, what if he is lying somewhere injured, as you were, as you did?

You spend that day pacing the confines of your chamber, trying to engineer a solution. Shouting brings no one to check in on you; tugging at your bangle offers no results. You cannot quite reach far enough above the ledge to see what lies beneath your window; you definitely cannot set foot outside your sleeping chamber. So you spend the evening, and much of the night, seated atop your bed, picking at your bangle – for as much as you appreciate his concern for your safety, you will not let it become the cost of his.

You stop only when your fingers are too slippery to allow you any further purchase upon the fine chain. You hold your hands out and away from you until they seem to have stopped bleeding, and pray only that you will not soil his shirt.

Another night passes. You know this not because of the daylight – the haze over the city outside your only window makes it difficult to tell what is day, and what is night, when consulted on its own – but because at some point during this day, the lamps set into the walls of your chamber have flickered, and gone out, and after a determined interval of murky and diminishing light, your chamber falls utterly, utterly dark.

Void, the dreams that then plague your sleep are not to be spoken of. Suffice to say there must be a price for loving above your right place – say it, Tyelperinquar, ‘there must be a price for loving a god’ – and these terrible dreams are surely it, for always they feature you and your lover. Always they show you some more horrifying way in which you might fall out with one another – why, in one of them, he even kills you.

You sweat, and wake, and toss, and turn, and try to sleep again, but the lack of the lamps has rendered your chamber a featureless void. There is no one, nothing, there besides you, and you know it, but your mind insists first that you are not alone, and then, a moment later, that you are. It is difficult to tell which is worse.

Again, and again, and again this happens. When the murk that must be daylight eases beyond your window, you are more exhausted than you had been the night before.

And now that it is day again, you realize with a groan that of course you cannot relight the lamps: you do not know what served for fuel. Besides, you find, your head grows dizzy if you stand too long, or reach too high. And so, when night comes again and the world falls dark – irrevocably dark – you retreat to your bed. Without your lamps, you can do nothing else, so long as the night lasts – you will trip, or run into a wall, and fall ~~and no one will find you~~ – but neither can you sleep. So you lie there and wonder, as your inclination suits.

 _Please_ , you imagine that you will say to Annatar, when he returns – _if_ he returns, though you scold yourself for this niggling doubt _. All is forgiven,_ you will tell him, _if you will only come back to me!_ Not that you are in any position to be demanding supplication, or him, any position to be requiring forgiveness, but still – the old saying ~~is it old? where had you heard it before?~~ that the heart is an unreasonable taskmaster proves that clichés do achieve ubiquity through aptitude. He has worried that he requires forgiveness for something? Stars, you love him so dearly that you will say you forgive him, and pray that anyone listening overlooks your encouragement of the deception that he requires forgiveness in the first place.

Day comes again, but your circumstances are not much improved. Loneliness has become a pang in your belly and a dizziness behind your eyes, though at least the bruises have faded so neatly that at times it is hard to remember they were ever there at all.

You read ever slower, as the words begin to spin before your aching eyes.

Another night passes. You drift to sleep before you can stop yourself; the dreams – well, you cannot say that they improve, and the new day brings with it very little relief.

Now that you are ~~limited~~ temporarily bounded to a single room, you find that your attention narrows somewhat. You do not know how long you will be ~~confined~~ here, so you determine to ration your books. Reading more slowly forces you to truly think through your new knowledge, and to even begin sounding the words aloud, stringing them together in what you are sure must be abominable excuses for verbal construction, but still! The application gives you a productive activity that takes up your attention in exchange for happily little strenuous activity, so you are not _too_ terribly hungry, and you produce fortunately little waste, after the first two – three? – nights, so it is all right.

You are all right.

But you cannot only read for all the hours contained in a day, and the thought of spending another night in utter darkness, fighting to balance between your body’s need for rest and your forbidden love’s price of false dreams, gives you an anxious energy to make up for that which you would ordinarily derive from sustenance. So you decide to explore, a little. When you had three chambers, you were greedy yet unappreciative of them; now that you have only one, you determine, you will learn and value it better.

One wall features the door to the receiving chamber you can no longer reach; this wall, like its brethren, is of patterned stone, and unadorned save for two of the now-cold lamps, fixed one at either side of your bed, the head of which is set against the wall. There is a bureau by the doorway, but it is empty of anything save some platters from the last meals Annatar had brought you, all those nights before, and the vial of oil that he uses to prepare you – though, you note with some small apprehension, this vial is almost empty. Surely there is more, somewhere? If only you could go into the other rooms again. . .

This petty concern aside, you spend a happy hour or two learning the textures of the stone – its many whorls and crevices, its irregular patches of coarse and planed – before your insatiability, and the renewed blood on your fingertips, leads you to move on. 

In the next wall, at a right-right angle to the first, is set your window. It is good that you came to this one next – you could, and have, spent hours balanced atop its narrow sill, letting what little of the sunlight that breaks through the haze warm your face. The wall itself, though, offers little else of interest, its stone markedly similar to the first – you would explore its consistencies more minutely, but you really would rather not bleed your fingers any drier: they still drip and ache as it is. Besides, you really do need these next few hours of light to see what else you might find, but as you move on, you promise yourself that you will spend the last hours of the day before your window, before the darkness falls again.

The next wall bears two more lamps, set directly opposite the two aside your bed – you measure and compare, navigating carefully around the trailing bangle, just to be sure. Otherwise, though, this wall is bare save for a tapestry portraying a silver city set into, and atop of, a plain of hills. You are no craftsman, and certainly have no experience as a seamster, but even you can appreciate the sheer artistry wrought in this image – depicted from the view of a bird, the city’s various spires and structures and streets gleam according to their purported distance, lending the entire drapery a marvelous illusion of depth.  Forgetting for a moment your circumstances, you raise your hand in wonder. You want to run your fingers down the shining streets, see whether the fine cloth truly captures the smooth coolness of the marble ~~how do you know it is intended to be marble?~~ , determine whether that depth is some manner of tangible craft as well as visible outcome. But the threads snag at your fingertips, and when you pull away, your blood is smeared across the silver city.

Void, you _do_ destroy everything you touch. . .

The final wall, at a left-right angle to the first, holds little but two last lamps, set into its stone, and a mirror, near as tall as you are, propped up against it by a stand of carven, oiled wood.

It is a beautiful mirror. More beautiful than you are, certainly.

For now, surveying yourself as you have had neither motive nor opportunity to do for so long, you realize with bone-deep certainty that you are not beautiful. Your chin is too proud, your nose too crooked, your hair too snarled and ragged; your legs are too thin, your ribs unhappily protruding. You look odd, half-clothed, for Annatar is shorter, smaller, than you, and the shirt that he so graciously gave you is now ragged at the cuffs, which you picked at as you read, and worse, stained at the arm-junctures with sweat produced when you sat dozing in the weak sunlight, or tossed about in one of your fevered visions. You wonder what he finds to admire in you.

Perhaps, if - ?

You take yourself in hand.

You watch, intently, as your mirror image strokes himself, fondles himself. Closer, you draw, and squint, but no, still you see nothing that would explain Annatar’s continued – until these last few days, at least – interest in you. Rather, the mirror shows that you look a fool, jerking gracelessly at his own cock. You cannot even rouse yourself. Pathetic.  

Maybe – what has he said that he likes to see you do?  

Pulling your hand away, you draw the flat of your tongue up your palm once, twice, three times – dry, dry, your mouth is so dry after four-five-six days with nothing to drink that you have not produced yourself – before reaching down again. The mirror cannot reproduce the slightly wet sound of your renewed attentions, but you cannot blame everything on a limitation of the medium – the fault must lie with you, for even this act renders you no more beautiful. Any art you might once have known – any coquetry or lover’s arts you might once have commanded – are vanished along with your memory of a former life with Annatar, a former paradise in the city hidden in the haze beyond your window.

In sudden self-loathing, you reach out and bat at the mirror. But the sudden movement makes your aching head swirl, and your fist flies wide, jarring the frame and in turn toppling the mirror, which topples-falls-shatters at your feet.

Void. Void void void. . .

The thick, fading scars that criss-cross your soles protect your feet from the worst of it as you crouch amidst the chaos, but no matter how delicately you grasp and lift the gleaming shards – how carefully you pile them atop your other palm– they prick your fingers; bleeding again, it is not long before you are forced to admit that you will not be able to tidy this particular mess away with your current resources. Even trying to brush the shards back into at least a neater pile leaves slivers of glass snagging, catching – embedded – in your hands, your fingers, your palms.

You hate to think what Annatar will say, when he returns and sees yet another mess that you have left for him to clean up, but – what else can you do?

Overwhelmed, suddenly, you lurch to your feet. Disregarding your shaking knees, your aching head, you stumble away from this latest evidence of your own negligence, but you do not make it far; you find yourself faltering for support against the next-nearest wall, the one opposite your bed.

With a sob you cannot suppress, you lean your head against the tapestry – this piece of art that now, along with your bangle, is one of the last two, no longer three, beautiful things in your chamber. Even knowing this loss, though – and knowing that it is by your own doing – you raise a weak fist to beat against the woven city in sacrilegious disregard for, or perhaps jealousy of, its beauty. And of course – rightfully so – the movement wedges some leftover sliver of glass deeper into your palm.

Less expectedly, something behind the tapestry echoes.

Echoes?

It takes nearly all your remaining strength to peel the cloth from its hangings, but in the end, the investment proves worth your while: there is a door, and –

It is not locked.

The new room seems to be – a study? Maddeningly, your bangle has not the length to allow you in, but even from the doorway, and despite the dimness of the tapestry draping back shut behind you, you can make out intriguing shapes, and – another window.

You _must_ deal with this bangle.

Back in your sleeping chamber and leaning against your bed, you ponder your options. These nights past, you have already tried opening the chain, or – Annatar forgive you – breaking it, but neither has won you even a breadth. What else is there to be done with it – oh. Slicked by your bloody fingers, the fine chain can be coaxed to slide beneath the foot of your bed around which it was looped, easily enough.

Back into the concealed study you creep.

This hidden room is almost as large again as the receiving and leisure chamber that you had ~~lost~~ to forego when Annatar gifted you with your bangle, and it is full, _full_ , of interesting things. Where the walls of your sleeping chamber are largely bare, the walls of this room are not even visible behind heavy shelves stacked with layers and layers of _things_ , half of it paraphernalia – lenses and wires and apparatuses – that you cannot imagine a use for. And nearly a third of an entire wall is comprised of a window of multiple panes, facing _west_ – beyond the dirt and grime coating it, you can even make out a blush of crimson that must be the sunset.

While you would welcome the opportunity to see a sunset – the first you can remember! There must be something in here that you could use to clean off the grimy window, you are not sacrificing any more of Annatar’s shirt – you concede, regretfully, that there are currently other uses for your time. Night is coming, and you cannot – _will_ not – let this opportunity simply fall into that great gaping darkness.

And so you go on.

Pawing through the papers that litter the great desk beneath the window, you realize something astonishing – few are in the language that you and Annatar speak. Indeed, most are in the tongue that you have been learning!

 _Mar_. You just learned this one. World!

Mmmm. Mmmm mmmm mmm. . . .

 _Corma_. Ring, you think, if you remember correctly?

Hmmmm mmm mmmm. . .

 _Túrë_? You have not reached the words of this configuration yet, but now you have extra incentive to push past the ache in your hands and belly, the dizziness behind your eyes, and read, learn, more!

And then, in - _AVAQUENYË_.

 I – refuse?

 Behind you there is a roar of flame as the tapestry is torn from the wall. Through its ruins strides Annatar, his eyes gold with fury and fear and pain.

 You are on your back between his legs, beneath his feet, at a single tug to your ~~chain~~ bangle.

  ~~The tapestry over the doorway of the study must have been muffling his calls for you. The bangle must have been dragged completely into the study with you. He must not have known where you were.~~

 “ ** _What. Is. This_** ** _?_** ”

 Stars. How easy it is to forget, sometimes, what Annatar _is_ , especially when you have not seen him for some days, and when most nights all his thought and action are bent toward loving you as sweetly as you imagine a man of your own people would! But in moments like this, when the fathomless depths of his power sear as righteous flame into your very bones, you are humbled anew by the realization that you have won for yourself the love of a _god_.

 “ ** _Tyelpe. Tell Me. What. This .Is_** ** _._** ”

You cannot speak for the vastness and weight of that love. Your own blood is hot and bitter on your tongue, where it has run down from your nose and up from the back of your throat.

“ ** _TYELPERINQUAR LEADEN-TONGUE, But The Once More Will I Ask You. What. Is. THIS?_** ”

How hotly his love scorches – you scream for the touch of it! And what will happen, if you cannot answer him? For you cannot answer him like this, you cannot, you cannot. . .

 _I do not know, my lord_ , you think, and if this is to be the end of you, you are not dissatisfied with it. You are with your lover again, and some great misunderstanding will be cleared, for the betterment of all.

Annatar’s voice diminishes – almost as if he can hear you.

Perhaps – stars, perhaps he can. You can only imagine what he must have thought, coming in to find you missing and your blood smeared across two walls, your bed in tatters and your mirror smashed.

He carries you back into your sleeping chamber and lays you out on your bed. Night has fallen again, but all six of your lamps are relit; sheets cool and clean and new receive you. And though there is food, a veritable feast, spread out on your sill, when Annatar sees the state of your hands, he will not let you feed yourself. From his arched hands you take morsels of bread, and meat, and cheese; from his cupped hands you drink water, and wine. Honey you lick from his fingers.

After such privation, you are surrounded by plenty. It is almost too much, to realize that you will not be alone in the dark again this night –

“He does not know, he says,” Annatar murmurs, thumbing away the first tear, and the second. Now that you are fed, he sets himself to cleansing and bandaging your hands. As he does so, though, he does not move to take his shirt from you. “And so here he lies, as unconcerned as though I had not almost sounded all alarums to search for him, in fear of his having fallen again. Tsk.”

His lips against your forehead are cool and soft, a soothing counterpoint to the scalding tears that still drip from your eyes. “Please, my love – you have no need to prove the power that you hold over me. Do not frighten me so, again.”

 _I never intended to_ , you think. If he heard you the last time, perhaps he will do so again now?

You do not resist when, his task completed, he takes his seat next to you atop the bed and pulls you to him so that your head rests in his lap. And so for a time the two of you remain; you leaning forward in weakness and grief, him providing strength and support despite everything you have done to prove you do not deserve such things. Eventually you raise a shaking hand to clutch at his shirt like the supplicant you are; he begins to pet through your hair as the benevolent divinity that he is. And you doze, unafraid of the gaping darkness or your fevered visions, when his hand is on you to ward them off.

After a time, you realize that he has continued murmuring all this time as well. “- hardly surprising, I suppose, that you managed to find your way there, my own; your ingenuity knows few bounds, no matter what the delicate state you might otherwise occupy. I suppose I should only be glad that you were found, and stopped – Tyelpe? Tyelpe, my love, are you awake?”

“Mmmm.” You are half-awake, at least.

“Did you find anything of interest to you in that dreadful room?” he asks, solicitously.

“A few notes about rings,” you murmur, sleepily. You do not mention the writer’s bold ending statement: I REFUSE. It seems to have little to add to the current conversation, and you will risk no further provocations tonight – not when your lamps have just been lit, your belly just filled, your lover just returned.

“Oh? Fortuitous of you, my precious, though I do wish you would stop fretting me so,” Annatar says proudly. Another kiss is pressed to your forehead. “Although- “

“Mmm?”

“You were able to read some of the notes, yes? I wonder if you might be able to help me in this: I have another that I have not yet been able to translate – it is some manner of cipher, I suspect. Will you try it? For me?”

You bestir yourself immediately – for him, of course you will!

Indeed, his suspicions about a cipher may very well be correct, for the note that he holds down to you is in neither the tongue you are currently speaking nor the one that you have been studying. And yet –

“It looks familiar,” you tell him, squinting at the half-burnt scrap of paper.

“Does it?” he asks with some excitement. “What does it say?”

Nothing that makes sense. “Ar-ta-nis.” You spell the syllables out, stressing them in different forms and measures, but the word still makes no sense. So you move on.

“Well?” Annatar prompts.

“It says that the first was sent to Ar-ta-nis.” Shaking your head to clear it, you look up at your lover. “Is that a name, do you suppose?”

Judging by the slow, sweet smile that grows across his face, it seems that your guess was a good one.

“Do you know, love, I think that it _is_ a name,” Annatar muses. He sounds cautiously cheered by your discovery, a supposition that is then proved by the way he nudges your head into position. Tired as you are, you simply nose at him affectionately, but he pushes harder, so you let him have what he wants.

“She is of, mmmm, Arafinwë’s line, if I’m remembering that mongrel pedigree correctly,” your lover continues as you rearrange yourself: “– why, I do believe I even met her brother, once.”

His shaking his head in disbelief makes it difficult for you to pull the folds of his braies apart with just your teeth, but you manage. “She is quite his match for arrogance, it seems, if she also thinks to oppose me.”

You only hum as you settle in to take him into your mouth, simply relieved that _something_ good came of all this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Túrë (n. “mastery, victory”)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh god, more new tags. . .
> 
> fact: this was only meant to be the intro to another chapter, but it spiraled utterly out of control, so - I guess it gets to be its own?

**From _órë_ (n., "heart** **/inner mind”) to _pusta_ \- (v. "cease, stop")**

 

Annatar was obviously touched – angered? frightened? – by your absence from your sleeping chamber, for he will no longer leave your side for more than the few minutes that it takes to bring in food. Instead, he remains with you constantly – speaking, feeding, cleaning, loving.

 He also replaces your bangle. The new version is heavier, sturdier – more functional than ornamental – and you do not much like it nearly so much as its predecessor, but you will wait for him to get over his fright before you mention it. You are in hardly the same danger of falling as before, anyway – the bones of your hands seem to have set, and soon enough there remains only a rough scabbing across your fingertips. You could also probably catch yourself with little to no further injury, as you have been calculating better ways to fall – instead of throwing out your hands, as you must have done before, you might try leading with a shoulder, and rolling into it to make use of the momentum that had originally worked against you. Not that you hope to have need of this plan, but to you it does seem like a sound one.

 In the meantime, though, you are concerned that your lover will become bored, or restless, since he no longer goes out to oversee the rebuilding efforts.

 “Mmmm.” Annatar leans over and kisses your forehead when you say this. “Which is but a politer way to say that _you_ are bored, and restless, and wish for something to occupy your time, my sweet, but never mind!”

 Standing with a graceful twist, he reaches under your bed and pulls out the next volume of the lexicon, as casually as if he has been doing so all along. “Where did you stop, my love?” he asks as he settles down beside you again.

Void, he knew. He knew he knew he knew he knew. . . 

You cannot remember. 

 “Mmm- _hmm_. Well, then. You shall simply have to stop me if I begin repeating anything you have already covered, eh?”

 No, truly! You are so stunned that he simply reached down and pulled up one of your books – or is this fear? why are you afraid, when the worst that can happen is that he will take them away from you in fear for your health – that you _actually cannot remember_.

 Why does he not believe you? 

 “Tyelpe. Tyelpe, look at me. Tyelpe. _Tyelpe_!” It takes the weight of his hand to bring you back to your senses. He sighs. “Better? Yes? All right.”

You still cannot breathe quite right, but it will pass. It always does. 

 Reading, his voice is perhaps even more beautiful than it is ordinarily, when he speaks – if only he ever made more than a sound during your lovemaking! but at those times he is ever patient and quiet, more encouraging of you – and you catch yourself wondering what it would sound like, if he were to sing. And having Annatar read to you is – utterly different from reading to yourself. For one thing, he pauses after each new word to name its part of speech and its closest equivalent or equivalents in the tongue that you already speak.

 For another, he also stops to demonstrate each new word.

  _Órë_. Noun signifying “heart” or “inner mind.” This definition is demonstrated by a brush of his fingertips to your forehead, the same spot that he had kissed in benediction earlier. “This is where the bulk of the Eldarin spirit is said to reside, sweet – what do you think? Impractical, I would argue, to let one’s personhood accumulate alongside the organ that regulates the body – a blow to the one would damage the both, yes? – but then, my critics would tell you, what do I know?”

  _Parna_. Adjective signifying “bare.” He sets the book aside for a moment to slide his soiled shirt from your right shoulder and place a kiss on the bare skin there. You cannot suppress a shiver at the feather-light touch. “I would expound upon this one in more detail, love, but I dread arousing your fearsome temper once more by leaving you utterly without clothing! Once was _quite_ enough of an alarming experience for me.”

  _Palta_. Noun describing “the flat of the hand” or else “the hand held upwards or forwards, flat and tensed,” and the related _palta_ -, a derivative verb signifying “to stroke or feel with the palm of the hand.” These two warrant a substantial pause, as Annatar delights in demonstrating various applications of the palm across various surfaces of the body at varying degrees of speed and force.

 You have covered quite some ground by the time he leaves to retrieve your supper, but something seems amiss. You don’t seem to have heard enough to have constituted all the pages he just read to you – were there fewer words in this particular volume?

 So you check, and – no. No. Annatar has skipped over at least three words – and possibly more, though three are all you can see in the brief moments that you know he will be gone from sight.  

 You do not understand it. The words are _otorno_ , a noun meaning “sworn brother.” _Palpa_ -, a verb meaning "to beat or batter.”

  _Pusta_ -, a verb meaning “to cease,” or in some cases, “to stop.”

 Now, Annatar is not so careless in any aspect of his person, and certainly not in any matter pertaining to you. So, it seems unlikely that he would have simply missed several words, at least one of which you would think is crucial to describing your relationship – for he is your sworn brother, is he not? – so, there must be some reason, some obvious reason, why he deems it unimportant for you to have a depiction of him.

 Or, on the other hand, a description of violence. Or a plea for cessation.

 But what _is_ that reasoning? Although his reasons for doing things – creating your bangle, feeding you himself, coming to you at certain times – have led to your continued health and recovery, you mislike how much you must rely on conjecture in this case.

 So.

 Does he think so little of you, that you could not handle learning words that describe the ugliness the Eldar are capable of perpetuating, or a directive whose coining stemmed from some quarry’s desire not to suffer? Simply because you, privileged creature that you are, need never describe a beating or plead for a stop – lovers do not need these things, lovers do not suffer these things – does not mean that you cannot learn the words all the same, yes? That is his reasoning, is it not?

 Yes?

 Yes?

 Still. When Annatar returns with your supper, you tell him that you are tired of reading. He acquiesces, although with some concern, and you must reassure him at length that no, you yourself are not actually tired, and yes, indeed, you are actually feeling quite well. Seemingly satisfied by those answers, he loves you for what feels to be several hours instead.

 And then you are tired.

 Shushing you gently, he raises a hand to your eyes, a finger to each of your eyelids, and slides them gently shut. You must lose consciousness instantly, for you remember nothing else – not even a dream – until he wakes you to feed you again.

 He does this several times before you think to ask him why, and when you do, he explains that this is not the way your people are meant to sleep, but. But. In doing so, he is placing your rest beneath his protection so that you will suffer no further false visions, no more despairing dreams. And indeed you do not.

 He does not answer your next question until you have asked it several times, but finally, kindly, he explains that it has been only two days. He has simply set you to nap at several points.

 Still. The nebulous light outside your window is of a similar quality each time you awaken. A morning, you would say, not a morning and then an afternoon and an evening, surely?

 No, Annatar is quick to assure you, it has only been two days.

 At his vehemence you subside, though he is also quick to kiss the sluggish gash in apology.

 Still. You must have some means of rectifying this doubt in your own powers of observation.  There must be some reliable standard – besides Annatar himself, of course – of determining between the reality of incarnate time and that of a god’s memory, which may be different from your own, you do not know.

 Yes?

 Because when you are awake Annatar only rarely leaves you – and then merely to step out of your room to fetch food, and oil – you turn to a resource you have already available: your sheets. You begin turning down the top right corner before he sends you to sleep; you straighten it when you wake, and rip a careful tear for each time the light outside your window seems near morning. It is a good plan, too.

 He notices eventually, of course – and at this point, by your makeshift reckoning, it has been nearly ten days.

 When you ask him, he tells you it has been only three. With naps. To heal.

 He catches at your hand when you slide it beneath your pillow to tear a new slit in the top of your sheet. 

 “Tyelpe, sweet.” You dare not struggle when he stands, coming to stand by the side of the bed to pull the pillow away. If you do, he must think you are hiding something – of potential, of value, of danger – when all you conceal is something small. A sign. An indulgence. For yourself. It is no sin. Is it?

 “What is this?” His fingertips, even more slender than yours, fit quite neatly into the small tears.

 Stars. He will be despondent, should it seem like you are doubting his word, and he may replace the sheets.

 The sheets cannot be replaced! You have so little else that exists independent of yourself, and of him, that can serve as a touchpoint for the world beyond your two selves with any measure of reliability.

 “Tyelpe? Tyelpe. What are you not telling me?”

 Void. Void no, void void no – you do not want to lie him, though! Lies are the refuge of the cowardly, those who have something to fear from the truth, and you know - no, you _know_  , you _do know_ , that you have nothing to fear here.

 “ ** _TYELPERINQUAR_**.”

 “Nnngh.” From the warmth down the side of your face, the drum in one of your ears has been ruptured. “ _Annatar_.” Your own voice sounds so, so far away. “Annatar, they are from my fingers.” When he falls silent, an eyebrow rising, you demonstrate. It is even true, or, at least, reflective of something true, for there are indeed ten of the tears now. “From when – from when I am on my knees.” And again, you demonstrate, though this part, of course, is not true at all.

 He makes a pleased noise, though, and comes to join you on the bed again. From your position, you cannot see him – with your injured ear, you cannot hear him – but you are relatively certain that he has – _ai_ , yes, yes he has, he has taken up the oil and he will – ngh – have you again.

 Still.

 Now, you reflect dully, you know your own breaking point: it is to protect your own conceit that you will stoop to lying to your lover. It is your pride in your own independence that is the price of your honor, your love, your gratitude: it is because you do not trust his count of the days that you will tell him you do not rip your sheets in conscious decision.

 You have never been more ashamed of new knowledge before.

 “Tyelpe? Dear heart, have I pained you?”

 “No,” you find the strength to whisper, and here, here is another lie to your wretched tally, for it hurts anew every time. “I can hardly imagine anything more pleasing.”

 “ _Hardly_?” The movement of his fingers slows, and then stops. “Dearest. Consider your own choice of words – ‘hardly’ means that more is possible, if also unlikely to be had. Know that I would give you only the choicest and best, and that for me, nothing is impossible. Tell me what more could I do, to grant you better pleasure!”

 He could leave you. No, no, not like that - not alone again for days and days! Just for an hour – a few hours – that you might clear your thoughts, determine some atonement, formulate a way to apologize for the gross breach of his trust.

 But no – instead of saying this, you lie again. A third time. A third sin.

 “I do not know,” you tell your lover. Your tears are falling freely now.

 “Well.” With a kiss to the small of your back, he withdraws his fingers. Replaces them. “Let us see if this helps, then?”

 “Ngh.”

 “Better?” he asks softly, leaning down to press another kiss, higher, this one to the center of your spine.

 Close enough, you decide, shivering as his mouth descends and alights, over and over, tracing a path of whisper-light kisses up your back. He is the bearer of unconditional things – love, light, land – and simply because such things do not always quite satisfy, does not mean that he was ever required to offer them in the first place. 

 “Better,” you tell him, and this time it is not a lie.

 “Good,” he whispers, as his kisses reach the back of your neck.

 Stars, how hard he likes to bite. “A- _nnatar_!”

 His smile is evident in the shape of his lips as he returns to your spine. He presses another kiss there, this one wetter and warmer than those that came before. The difference is most likely blood. “That _is_ my name, precious, and I am gratified that you have not forgotten it.”

  _To whom would I go?_ It is a silly question, and it does not even match the context: you do not know why it came to mind, when what you might better mean is: “Wh- wh-“

 The question will not form, straight away – he is well-rested, today, and his pace shows it. “Why would I – ngh – have forgo-for-forgo – ai – forgotten it?”

 “My name?” he asks, with another thrust. “My dear, if I knew why your kind commit even a third of the idiotic foolishness that they do, I promise you that our world would not be in half the state that it currently is. An inaccurate sort of percentage-figuring, I grant, but frighteningly applicable despite its irregularity. You had another suitor, once.” 

 It is slightly difficult to tell which part of that speech he means for you to focus upon, especially as he never stops moving. A guess will have to do. “A- a suitor?”

 You seem to have guessed correctly, though, for his next bite is loving, and light enough to merely bruise. “Well. I say suitor, but the term does bring to the image of a creature that pursued you. An ‘ideal,’ then, let us say: you once had another ideal, someone other than me whom you pursued.”

 Why – why mention this now, if he is the one who has stayed with you, cared for you, loves you?

 “Because.” He does nothing so base or low as grunt when he finishes; you only know that he is done by the warmth and the brief twinge when he dismounts. “There is something that I need your help with, beloved, but I – I almost fear to ask you for it.”

 “Ngh.” Before you can rut your own satisfaction out atop the sheets like the animal you are, his hand has snaked between your legs. “Annatar.” He grasps you firm. “Please.” You dare not even move from your knees, though you are sure he would let go in time, did you do so. “ _Annatar_!”

 “I am speaking, love,” he says, patiently. “I wish you would stop trying to distract me so. Hold but a moment?”

 You are weak. “I – ai! – Annatar, I cannot – aah – I _cannot_!” For it is true – even his firmest of holds cannot bring your concentration back from your own need.

 “Oh, Tyelpe,” he says, and there is a sadness in his voice that _oh, stars_ you wish you could hold yourself together for long enough to address. “You have enjoyed our learning new words together these past few days, mmmm? Here is another for your expanding vocabulary, then: vanity.” In deference to your lust-addled mind, he uses a term that you already recognize. “When you love yourself, and yourself alone, to the exclusion of all else, that is vanity – and oh my sweet, I would wish of you to avoid this one vice at all costs!”

 He loosens his grasp, but must immediately tighten it again as you lose control of yourself and squirm. He sighs. “I may be many things, Tyelpe, but I am not vain.” You cannot control a shout at the well-placed pinch of his fingers. “I love you, and all your little foibles, and this city, and the world that we reside within, far more than I value my own pitiful self. And thus I would do anything, no matter how desperate, to save that which I love – which includes you, and your little cruelties, your small pettiness, as much as it does our city, even our world.”

 He leans forward, then, and brushes a kiss to your shoulder, before loosing his hand. “Please, Tyelpe – my precious, my only.” You barely have enough presence of mind to hear the remainder of his words as you rut into him, panting in selfish pursuit of your own pleasure. “Be anything that you must – be cruel to me, be blind to my gifts, be ungrateful of all that I do and have done and will yet do for you – but become not vain!” You cry out as you finally spend, your seed soiling his hand and his sleeve as he gentles you through the heady rush. “Do not let self-love blind you to all else who need you, who would benefit from your light, your guidance, your glory. And if – if I am not enough to keep such vices from you, only tell me who you would prefer, even if it is she whom you desired before me. Do but tell me, and I will bring her here for you!”

 Even through the roar of your pulse in your ears you can hear that Annatar is near to tears as he names the lengths to which he would go for you, and you cannot imagine how deeply, how dearly, it must cost him to commit to such an undertaking – to promise that he would locate some earlier paramour, someone who must have abandoned you to him after your fall, and then surrender his place to that one again. All for you.

 What can be said to such devotion?

 Not another lie. No more lies. Three is more than enough to make reparation for.

 “I will not be vain,” you promise, committing the last of your failing energy to leverage yourself about, that you are lying on your back where you can see his face again. “I will not be vain,” you repeat, “and it is you I love, Annatar.” Not some faceless ideal from a time you cannot even remember – not someone, anyone, who cannot ever have loved you as Annatar does.

 His eyes heavy with fear and concern, Annatar surveys your face for a moment. Then:

 “Good.” He leans forward, the immaculate white shirt on his body brushing across the soiled one wrapped about yours, and presses yet another kiss to your lips. “I can only pray that this resolve holds true, but oh my love, for as long as you claim such a thing, I am most happy indeed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shout-out to Bushwah, who very kindly let me ~~steal~~ use the line "to not be true -- or reflective of something true, at least" from the comments on last chapter. Thank you!
> 
> Also, for something entirely different: Saliache and I are starting a Very Serious™ news blog, also inspired by a conversation in last chapter's comments. Come visit us here! https://the-tater.tumblr.com/


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **From sahtië (v., ger., "pressure to do something against one's will or conscience") to talantië (v., "he is fallen")**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please be aware that new tags have been added. . .

  **From _sahtië_** **(v., ger., "pressure to do something against one's will or conscience") to _talantië_ (v., "he is fallen")**

 

You were wrong.

Of course you were.

 “Mmm.” You gasp for breath when Annatar pulls away, but it is at least half in surprise – you had not been expecting a kiss in response to your request to remove the bangle. “Can you at least wait a day more, my love?” he continues. “I have not the tools with me now, I fear – I have been hopelessly distracted by another undertaking.” When you do not answer right away, he presses, concerned. “Is – is that well, my love?”

 Of course it is.

 “Of course,” you murmur, pulling lightly at his hair, tugging him back down atop you. “You always remember what I ask of you.” In the end, at least.   

He smiles, and follows your insistent hands, but even as he does there is a burst of noise from the room beyond, that which was once your living chamber. You can place the clank of metal, the rising notes of three-four-fives voices – the harsh breaths of the wounded, the strident breaths of the roused or the running. A cry of pain.

 After so long of hearing only yourself, the whispering pages of your books, and Annatar, it is an absolute cacophony – even when its makers are in a chamber completely apart from you.  

 You resist the urge to cover your ears, and instead, pull Annatar closer.

 With a sigh, he permits you.

 “Master?” It is a harsh voice – grating, rough, almost as unlovely as your own. “We ‘ave ‘er.”

 “Excellent,” Annatar says loudly. Then, more softly: “Tyelpe, love. Let go.”

 You sigh, unhappily, as he disentangles himself from you and stands, straightening his clothes – the lot today: overrobe, underrobe, shirt, braies, and boots – before striding toward the other room. At that threshold, though, he stops, suddenly, and turns back to face you.

 “Do you trust me, Tyelpe?”

 Do you – _trust_ him?

 “Wh- what?”

 “It is hardly so complex a question, sweet. I simply want to know whether you trust me.”

 What is he asking you? You certainly trust that he will always do what he thinks needs to be done, but – that is not what he asked, is it. Is it?

 Trust _in_ him, perhaps? Well, he exists, and he is here, and there must be a reason for all that he does, and he does not always believe that you can handle that reason – yes, all _that_ you do believe.

 Is that trust? You think that it is. In him? You do not know. But either way, it is close enough an answer to his question without being another lie, so.

 You nod, once.

 You do. You trust.

  _Something_.

 Annatar beams. “Excellent. That will make everything so much easier.”

 “Master?” It is the same voice as before. “We a’right t’ stay ‘ere?”

 “Shut your gorge and dredge up some patience,” Annatar replies, benevolent as a lord. He is still smiling at you – full, and soft, as if gifted with some wondrous treasure through your admittance of trust.

 “My love.” His hand extends to you. “Come with me.” And then, lowering that hand, he steps from your room, out of sight. You can hear his beautiful voice taming the cacophony in the outer chamber.

 But.

 Your bangle is still about your ankle, chaining you in place lest you fall.

 What does he mean, do you trust him? Did he mean for you to stand and follow him?

 Dimly – as if from far away – you register that your breathing has sped, and stuttered, and continues to do so. It is, ah, _imperative_ , that you decipher and act upon your lover’s words correctly, lest he be displeased with you once more. You still have not made adequate reparation for the three lies you told him, a day past; you fear your body cannot handle the reparations for any more than those three – and void, how you hate that it is this mercenary line of reasoning, not honor or right, that is become your main incentive not to fall into falsehood!

 Your vision dims. Your head is pained.

 “My love?” Annatar calls from the next room.

 You can do this. You can work this puzzle out. You can. You will.  

 First fact: you trust that he does not want you to fall. Again. You will be hurt. Again. He will find you, and heal you, and love you, but it will take time, and he wants you now, so. So.

 First inference-slash-divergence-slash-line of questioning: are you meant to trust that he will not let you fall, or, to trust that if you do, there will be some greater reason for it?

 In the other room, beyond your sight, voices rise and fall. Metal jangles, there is another cry of pain, and Annatar calls you again. “Dear heart?”

  _What does he mean, do you trust me do you_ trust _me do you TRUST me_

You have no answers, and you doubt that you will find any here. So you stand.

 Your legs protest the sudden weight, for you have not stood since that day when Annatar returned to you, bound your wounds, and fed you from his own hand – but you do stand.  

 “Precious?” Annatar calls, a third time now. Anger tinges his tone. You are stumbling toward the sound of his voice before you even realize what it is that you do.

 “I am coming!” But it is only when you are standing in the doorway, shivering with nerves and exertion, that you realize your bangle has not tripped you. In fact, when you look back it has simply lengthened to accommodate your movement – one end is still fastened to the bed, and the other around your ankle.

 See? This is what comes of having faith in your lover. He did not want to hurt you at all! Though you wonder that he could do this, but not remove it completely, without tools as he said. . .

 This line of reasoning trails off as you look, actually look, about the chamber that you have neither seen nor set foot in for so long.

 It hits you first how much _light_ there is, when a room boasts two windows instead of one, and an arched doorway besides. How large it is – how bright – how beautiful!

 It strikes you second, that you and Annatar are not alone. Voices are not disembodied – they belong to other beings – and there are five-six-seven others in the chamber with you and your lover. Most – cave-bleached, acid-boiled, fire-scarred soldiers taller and paler than either you or Annatar – are ranged in a loose formation facing you; it was their metal, crusted blades and rusted armor, that you heard from your room.  Two more – a golden lady, a silver lord – are on their knees at the soldiers’ feet, and, judging by the blood on their faces, the floor, the swords, it was their pain that you heard from your room.

 Whatever their differences, though, your entry seems to have replaced any disaccord or dissent.  Annatar, who was facing the entryway, simply smiles, pleased at your trust, and turns back to the motley gathering crowding your erstwhile sitting space. The golden lady never takes her eyes off him – sharp, watchful, she tracks his every move, her brow thunderous and fearful combined. The silver lord never looks from her. The soldiers all stare, in varying degrees of surprise and – appreciation? – at you. 

 And only then, finally, does it strike you, third – but for the first time in many many days – that you are naked of all save the tattered remains of the shirt that Annatar gifted you.

 “Didn’ realize you was inna habit a’ takin’ war-prizes, Gorthaur,” one of the soldiers says, filed teeth bared in a leer. It is difficult to determine who he is addressing when his eyes never leave your body.

 “Such breath-taking disrespect and lack of discipline,” Annatar says mildly, sadly, and you feel a twinge of relief that he is siding with you, rather than with whoever Gorthaur might be.The soldiers’ eyes upon your body are not comfortable in the way that Annatar’s have become – familiar, at least. . . “Bûzogogh?”

  “Yes, Master?” This comes from the soldier closest to Annatar, all but standing at his side. Where you would normally be. Where you should be. Where you might have been had you mustered the strength to stand and follow your lover sooner. . .

 “That piece of filth who presumed it was his place to even look upon my lover. Slit his throat.” 

Wait. What?

 The soldier so addressed seems just as confused. “Master?”

 Annatar sighs. “I look forward to the day when someone – anyone! – around me realizes that although there may be a time and a place for hesitation and questioning, my orders will never be such an occasion. May that day come soon, for I tire of repeating even the simplest of directives!”

 He gives no further signal, no other sign, but the soldier that had leered at you gurgles in his throat and collapses, spasming. The others shuffle, uneasy, and the silver lord gives a small cry, quickly stifled, as the soldier slumps nearly atop him.

 No, no, a soldier no more, a body, a _body_ –

oh stars oh _Void_ your lover just killed a man –

 Annatar is beside you the instant you crumble to your knees, one of his slender hands latching tight to your arm and the other rubbing soothing motions across your back. You clutch back, and hope that this reads as some measure of returning his love and support, but stars you do not understand –

  _how could he just kill a man_ just like that _what does he mean do you trust me_

 – and the chamber seems smaller now, tighter, there is no room no air to breathe –

 “ - in shock, but fret not, sweet one, I will have your floors cleaned, you will not even know such waste was there-“

 “Celebrimbor.”

 The word is spoken in an unfamiliar voice, hoarse but sonorous, and beneath your grasping hands you can feel Annatar’s arms tense.

 “Such a hateful tone, my lady, for such an occasion,” he says softly. He does not turn, though, does not leave you, and you are absurdly grateful that _something_ has not changed _in a world where your lover has just killed as he pleased, and in your name at that_

“For once, Gorthaur, and only once, we are in agreement. Such a traitor does not deserve the name of his sire, his grand-sire, his house!”

 Your – father? Your – house? Wh- Annatar has mentioned nothing of this to you! And

– oh. _Oh_. Perhaps in this, as in all else your lover does, there was a good reason, for when you look up, finally, the golden lady has turned all the considerable fire of her eyes from Annatar to you.

 She looks at you as though you are the one who killed, and truly, if Annatar did it for you, then perhaps, in reality –

 No! No, it was not you who killed that soldier  _why would your lover do such a thing do you trust me he asked you_

 “We thought you dead,” the golden lady continues, her voice as soft as your lover’s had been, but a moment before. Only, where Annatar’s voice speaks of peace and assurance, hers is a fire banked, but waiting the fuel to leap once more. “And we deemed the knowledge of your works lain safely to sleep with you, gone to Mandos, where it could help him, hurt us, no more.”

 This is not someone who ever bore you any love. This is someone who would see you – dead?

 “Lady.” Your voice trembles, as do your hands, but Annatar rises with you, provides a shoulder to lean upon as you struggle to your feet. “I – I do not understand!”

 “Neither did I, but all is much clearer now.” She is not fazed in the slightest by the way her head must tilt up to meet your gaze, now that you stand while she kneels. Her eyes follow your every move with a contempt you cannot fathom. “How else would Gorthaur know whence had gone the contested Rings, why else would he spend a solid fortnight battering our lines to get at a single command post? You may not understand, kinsman, but oh I do – you betrayed us. Tell me this, at least, little one – is he so fine a fuck that you would damn the rest of us for this last taste of him?”

 Wait, wait. What – “Annatar!”

 He backhands her across the face, and there is a snap – bone? When he steps away, you can see that the structure of her skull beneath her right eye has shattered.

 “Annatar!”

 But the golden lady simply spits her blood at his bare feet and – oh. She speaks the tongue that you have been studying?

 But. _Ormë_ and _mando_ and _nuru_ and _oialë_. Wrath and chains and – and interruption. Cessation. Death.

 Everlastingly.

 She is – cursing you.

  _Ormë_ and _mando_ and _nuru_ and _oialë_. Logically, you know that death and eternity are two mutually exclusive concepts. But in this moment, by her voice, you could almost believe that they are not.

 “How very like your – uncle, was he? – of you, lady,” Annatar says with some amusement. “Enough of your pleasantries, though. Where is my ring?”

 Another casual backhand leaves her other eye red with blood and the skin around it burst.

 You seize Annatar’s hand when he lifts it for another strike. You know from experience how – _distracting_ – his blows can be.

 “Annatar, no. Please!”

 The golden lady coughs, and spits more blood at your feet, but you hold firm. “No!”

 He smiles, leans forward to press a brief kiss to your lips, and then pulls away, strikes again. “Why defend such a wretch, my love?” At his feet the golden lady is slow to look back at you, her neck strained so far from its right place, but look she does, and her fury is not at all dimmed, though her eyes are.

  _because you killed a man,_ you do not say. “Because it is wrong,” you say instead.

 “Wrong, wrong, what is wrong?” He sighs, gentle and sweet – mocking. “My love, do you even remember Galadriel?”

 Who?

 “Who, Annatar?” But this was not the right answer, it seems, for he laughs, and strikes again. The golden lady is thrown to the floor with the strength of it, and by her side the silver lord whimpers, and at your back now the soldiers murmur in pleasure and excitement _and your lover killed a man for you and he will do so again_. . . “Annatar, please, I do not know her, I have never known her!”

 This answer is more to his liking, it seems, for he catches your trembling hand in his bloody fingers and, lifting it to his pristine mouth, presses a warm kiss to it. “You would swear this to me, sweet one?”

 “Ask not. . .” The words dribble from the golden lady’s mouth, much as does the blood.  “A Fëanorian. . . to swear. . .”

 She is hurt, she may be dying, and it is all on your account – what answer does he wish from you in exchange for aiding her? There must be no more lies on your account, no further deaths on his! “Annatar?”

 “Do you swear to me, Tyelpe?” he asks. “Love?”

  _Do you trust me he asked you, do you trust me do you TRUST me_

 “I do.” Swear and not trust, though the distinction pains you to make. “I swear-“ and because you have never used the name before, and it might please him enough to pass over that last hurdle- “my love.”

 The smile that he gives you could surely light the world, and it is almost easy, in the light of it, to forget what you have just seen him do. But you must make certain of it.

 “You will not kill them, then?” you whisper.

 “I will not kill them,” Annatar promises. Then, in one of his graceful fluid motions that you have become so familiar with, he has turned-moved- _gone_ – and the golden lady is screaming as he hoists up her arm _which is separate from her torso_ and there is such a stink of cooked meat that you can almost overlook the blood pooling on the floor. . .

 Annatar clucks, ever graceful, as he lowers his own arm and begins to pull apart the bloodied flesh of what was once her hand with detached interest. “Ah. Here we are, then – that was not so diffic-”

 Your lover’s scream of pain is like nothing you have ever heard before – tortured and hollow and echoing, up and up and up as if the ceiling is no barrier to its ascension.

 A small circle of bloodied metal drops to the floor. Annatar’s first finger and his thumb are charred, seared-and-bitter-flaking-black.

 Through the blood and the haze and the ringing silence that follows, the golden lady begins to laugh. She laughs and she laughs and she does not stop.

 It is almost as terrible a sound as your lover’s cry. Almost.

 “See. . . what becomes of those . . . who cross the line. . . of Fëanor. . . their precious jewels. . . speak to having. . . been stolen. . . will burn . . . Have you learned. . . nothing. . . from your own. . . master. . .”

 Annatar’s face contorts with his rage. “Bûzogogh.”

 The soldier so named, who has long since shrunk from your lover’s side – _good_ – cringes further at being named. “Master?”

 “Remove this refuse from my sight.” Annatar looks neither left nor right, only down at his hand, so burnt and twisted.

 “C’n – c’n I ‘ave ‘er?”

 The silver lord cries aloud in his turn, the first sound of choice that you have heard him make. “No! Take me, please, take me instead – I will do anything you ask!”

 “Gorthaur!”

 “My lord, please!” 

“Annatar?”

 “ ** _ENOUGH_**.” The voice of your god, your lover, is enough to silence every other, as it always is. “ ** _You_** , I will deal with momentarily. Captain. The Sinda is yours. Give the lady to your men, and tell them to be careful of her. For a day, at least. Any longer is at their discretion.”

 Then Annatar is turning to you again as his men lift-drag-carry the golden lady, the silver lord, from your old living chamber, and the raging pain, the absolute fury of that horrible cry have not lifted from his face, and it is all your doing for you did not trust and could not even say so. . .

Stars and void, you think as you close your eyes. But at least you were able to save someone, from the anger that is rightfully yours to bear.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bûzogogh = "mess killer" (Black Speech)


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **From to _túrë_ (n. “mastery, victory”) to _úquétima_ (adj., "impossible to say”)**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for the three weeks it's taken me to update this - this chapter in particular was difficult to write, and beyond that, IRL events sucked away a lot of the time and energy I usually devote to writing. 
> 
> That being said! The delay is over ~~if only other things were too~~ and as always, please watch the tags. . .

**From to _túrë_** **(n. “mastery, victory”) to _úquétima_ (adj., "impossible to say”)**

 

“So, Tyelpe.” Annatar’s voice is low, and soft, and pleasant to the ear, but not for a moment can you forget that there is fury, such fury, lingering somewhere beneath its surface. This is, after all, the god who killed a man

in your name

just for looking at you. . .

and pulled the arm from a woman’s torso

in his own name

just for defying him.

He is a god. Your god. He must have his reasons for all that he does. “Annatar.” Must he not?  “Annatar?”

He does not look to you, though, but instead to his hand – his poor lovely hand, blackened and cracked where it made contact with the ring the golden lady wore. And though he makes no further move to retrieve it – if you looked down, you imagine, you would see that very ring shining through the blood and gore that had been _the lady’s arm_. . .  

“So, Tyelpe,” Annatar repeats, though his eyes are still fixed to his hand and do not rise to meet your face. “Here we find ourselves again, in the very same place that we stood before your unfortunate fall. You and your trinkets, pretensions, that self-satisfied smile – the sheer, shining _waste_ that you crafted from bastardized knowledge, half-complete and all-stolen as it was.” His voice never departs from its cadence, never shakes its soft tones. “Again, Tyelpe? Will you ever have enough of this, seeking to deprive me of all that I am owed? Of all that is mine?”

He flexes his hand, as you have seen him do when anything dirties it – a spill of wine, a smear of blood, the spit of your mouth. Before, the movement would end with a graceful flourish, and his hand would be clean.

But now, nothing happens. The cracked skin, the blotched flesh – all stay as they were.

He tenses. Clenches and straightens his hand again. Snarls, when yet again there is no change.

Then finally, finally, he looks up at you, and _bytheVoidhiseyesareBLANk_

“What. Have. You. Done.” And for all that he is shorter than you – slighter than you – in the gathering storm of his anger he _looms_.

“Annatar?” You have done nothing, save stand and watch in miserable inability to succor his pain. “My lo-“ No, that will not be enough, not this time. Not anymore. “My lord?”

“Your accursed trinket _burned_ me, Tyelpe.” How calm he sounds! “And to an extent that I cannot simply dematerialize the damage - even, I imagine, were I to shift my form.” And that calm is worse, so much worse, than even the scream he had given earlier, for then at least he was motion and light and breath where now –

he is blank and empty and cold,

eyes and face and tone alike.

“This should not be possible, Tyelpe,” he says, softly, for all the world as if this were a lecture and you his errant pupil. “To Morgo- to _others_ , perhaps, if they were trapped in one flesh as are you incarnates, then yes, it could happen.” He is still staring at his hand, at the blackened flesh at his fingertips, and again in his palm where he tried to pick up the trinket. “But not to me. Not me. Not **_Me_**!”

His voice strains for the first time – rises, dips, and falls. Somewhere in its caverns echo things you know you should not hear, but you cannot stop your hearing. “No, Tyelpe, I will not be trapped again – not like this, not by _you_. Captivity of my will by your amorous whim was abhorrent enough while it lasted, but _this_ , this captivity of the flesh by your imbecilic deed – no, no, _this_ I will not stand for!”

He is not like you, you are reminded again, but a god – he of the empty eyes and prickling smile and gathering fury. You are – nothing, compared to this. To him.

And well he must feel that now. “Pick it up.”

What? “My lord?”

“Do not test me, Tyelpe. Your wretched ring. Pick it up.”

“My – ring?” You own no rings, no finery. No satin, no silver. The bangle of gold that cradles your ankle and the torn shirt of white that hangs off your shoulders are the finest things you can lay even the slightest of claims to. Besides your god and lover, did he permit you.

“ ** _ENOUGH_** ,” he thunders, and you are battered to the wall with the clap of sound that accompanies his word. “ ** _ENOUGH OF YOUR FALSE PRETENCES, ELDA, AND PICK UP THE RING_**!”

Oh. Of course. There is only one ring that currently occupies his thought, and even though it is not yours, you will not vex-anger-rile him further with the reminder. 

Balancing – stooping – kneeling admist the blood and filth is difficult, with the aftershocks of the voice of a god rebounding in your ears and streaming from your eyes, but balance – stoop – kneel – dig – you do. Does it occur to you that this little thing, this pretty little thing, burned a god, and that it must also do so to you, the least of his worshippers? Of course it does. And so you hesitate when at last you find it, nestled amidst the shattered white shards that were once perhaps a fingerbone.

“My lord?” And when he does not speak: “My lord, I am afraid.” Pain without purpose, you have never understood, and though you know he does not subscribe to this method – not for nothing has he ever pained you – it seems that kneeling amidst the remains of one of your own, and one of your own whom you have slain with your unguarded tongue, drives away even your faith. “Please, my lord.”

But his hand – his right, the unburnt – descends to your hair, cradles the back of your skull, slips lower to stroke your heated neck. And finally he speaks.

“Tyelpe. For once, my own, just this once – can you not put my necessity, my desperate need, above your own groundless fears, your mad aspirations?” There is still anger in his voice – of course there is, your god has been burned and now his beloved is doubting him – but overlying that anger, banking it, there is sorrow. Guilt, perhaps, for the pain you must encounter – remorse, perhaps, for extremes in which he must use you to such ends.

And too, no matter the wrong of his method, he has proven already the value that he places in you, has he not? What manner of beloved are you, should you prove unable to validate that conviction, that faith?

Emboldened and braced, you stretch forth your hand, and pick up the ring.

It –

Oh.

No, not it, _she_ , for her name is _Nenya_ and she is Adamant and Sea and Mithril and Ice – oh – she does not burn you. Indeed – oh! – she whispers to you a sweet-crisp-cool waterfall of welcome, - oh oH OH – her power sinking into your bones to wash away their weakness and fill the fractures in with silver.

The tears that you had shed in awe, and regret, are fast becoming those of elation as Nenya straightens your frame and strengthens your blood, soothing injuries and hurts that your lord had likely overlooked in his second-hand knowledge of the incarnate form. Nenya, o Nenya! What a glorious piece of craftwork – and yes - how strong, vibrant, astute, her maker!

You understand, now. Of course your lord would move all things, even you, to recover her – Nenya surely cost him great effort to fashion, and must be among his greatest treasures.

The tide of adamant sea and mithril ice lending you strength, you rise from your knees in the gore of the thief. And o, the dawning joy on the face of your god and lover!

“Tyelpe?” he says, softly. “Will you give me this ring, my love? A gift, a boon, in its entirety and of your own free will?”

How else does one give, save of his entirety and his own free will?

“Tyelpe?” he asks, concerned for you when you do not respond. “Give it unto me, my precious!”

Not _it_ , though, _she_ , and Nenya croons in your hand, a siren song promising that, seated on your hand, she will see to it that Summer never fades, Time never sets his grasping talons to your lands or people ever again. . .

But you have no lands, no people. No anthropomorphic Summer has wronged you, and Time is an abstract concept instituted to give diverse communities some mutual standard by which to set common goals. Of more importance, though, your lover has asked this of you – this, this smallest of gestures.

You bow your head and raise your hands, proffering him Nenya.

He beams, you imagine as you close your eyes. This great treasure returned to him at last, the faith of his beloved assured once more – all will be well, and if you can only extract of him a pledge that he never slay another in your misbegotten name again. . .

You can feel the brush of his fingers as they descend lightly to your palm, first finger and thumb brushing your skin as he reaches forth to take back his treasure, and –

there is a flare of burning frost from Nenya, she of the Adamant and the Ice. Beneath her your skin ripples and crackles with cold, and somewhere before you your lord cries out again in pain. Your hands are slapped away.   

Your head rears in shock and your eyes fly open, and without conscious decision you find yourself stumbling backwards, away from your lord as his terrible cry dies away and he clutches his right hand, newly-burnt where Nenya made contact. 

Nenya herself is gone, flung from your hands by the force of his clout, and you know not what became of her.

Your lord’s breathing is erratic, and distressed, as you have never heard it before. He pants as if he were almost a man, a creature incarnate like you.

“What have you _done_ , you wretched creature?” he breathes, tearing his gaze from his hands – both of them, now, mutilated and burned by the hoarfrost touch of Nenya.

Done? You have done nothing, you do not understand why Nenya suffered your touch and not his, you are sorry you are sorry. . .  “My lord?”

 _Void_ you have never felt such fear come over you – not when he spoke as a god, not when he asked more of you than you had known you could give – as descends upon you now that he falls still, and silent, and steps forward –

His eyes completely empty, dark from rim to lid, and his hand clenching as if it would rise to strike.

Powers save and protect you, please. . .

“My lord, no!”

Back you scramble as he takes another step forward, then another, and another, and _anotheranotheranother_. . . “Please!”

Your back strikes a wall, and you scramble to correct it, only to fall back through the entryway into your sleeping chamber. As you land aside your bangle on the floor, you are struck with the horrible premonition – knowledge, truly – that he is letting you escape.

If only so that he can follow you.

You have only just regained your feet when he comes to stand in your doorway. Wrath and glory blaze behind and through him.

“My lord.” It is not seemly to plead, he has said so many times before, so this is not. Not pleading. Even though he shines as the sun and you will surely be burned by him where Nenya touched you not. “My lord, what will you have?”

  _Of me_ , you need not say. Of course he will have something of you.

“Why should I – why _would_ I – request anything of you ever again?” he asks, serene again to all appearances – this god who wears your lover’s face and such empty, empty eyes and needs not _hear_ your words to _know_ them. “I need not demand that which I already own, Tyelpe, an axiom that includes your prideful undertakings as much as it does your pitiful self. And yet. Your _ring_ , Tyelpe, your ring would not have me. It is as the pitiful gems of Fëanor all over again, save with less cause, less reason, less right. Why, my sweet? Do you refuse me?”

He steps forward again. And for all that your lexicons speak so surely of pride, and honor, and fearlessness – in the end those are just words, and none of the concepts they name map onto anything you can actually remember experiencing. This day, you hold true to two precepts only – first, that you do not much wish to learn what happens when spirit is disjoined from flesh, and second, that you will lie no more to your lover.  

Or – three precepts, actually. Third, that your lord loves you.

He does. He has said so.

He does.

So you step forward to meet him. Never mind how your legs shake. 

“N-“ You bite back the ‘no.’ “Not instinctively, my lord.”

“Not instinctively, he says,” your lord repeats, mockingly. “That is not a ‘no,’ my pet, so let us not take it as such.” Another step forward, and another – you are all but chest to chest now, and the warmth of him scorches both flesh and spirit.

“My lord, you are paining me.”

You are not like your lord – your spirit does not exist independent of your body. The whimpering thing that now shrinks before his fire is a diaphanous machine comprised of their tandem mechanics – body and soul, neither one capable of individual operation should either be removed too far from alignment. 

“My – ngh – lord.”

Should his touch become indelicate.

“My _lord_!”

As it has become, for two fingers to your chest, burrowing beneath the remains of his shirt to rest upon bare flesh, are far more than enough to render your skin as fiery as though it were actually alight.

“ _Annatar_!”

Though they shake, both your hands – whole and unblemished, healed of all they suffered in your fall so long ago now – rise to meet his one, pulling it from your chest and holding it tight, one atop and the other beneath. They burn, and burn, and burn, but you must – make him understand, somehow –

“Do you imagine you could stop me, dearest one?” he croons. His one hand turns in your grip and his other comes up to cradle in turn so that now your four shared hands are clasped in some semblance of an embrace. “Well?” His much-loved face swirls before your eyes, which strain with the rising heat that pours in shimmering waves from his shining form.

“I do not,” you concur, your voice a horrific croak parched of its natural life.

“What would you attempt to do about it, then?” he presses, as if he were truly curious. Unfortunately your eyes burn too badly to provide visual confirmation. “If I cannot gain from you the slightest of aid, provision, or even _concern_ in my greatest need, what good are you to me? What precaution ought I bother to exercise concerning you?”

None, and none.

Unless –

there _were_ something you could do to make up in any minute way for your loss of his Nenya, his demonstration of the worth that he placed in you and now deems mistaken.

What was it he said, once – _I imagine you would press your knee between these legs, love. . . I would humor you. . ._

 “None,” your parched throat manages to whisper. “Permit me.”

“Oh?” he asks, softly, clasping your hands a little tighter.

You have not the voice to communicate your intent, but you attempt to telegraph it with your body – reversing your positions, clumsily, so that he is the one facing the window, he is the one with his back to the frame of your bed.

“Mmmm.” He hums beneath a dry-mouthed kiss, which in your growing heat-blindness you press to his cheek, the corner of his mouth, before finding its right place atop his lips. “As distractions go, Tyelpe – mmmmm – this could work very nicely, if you manage it correctly.”

You will do your best. And not simply because you are afraid, either.

Dimmed sight and rising heat notwithstanding, you manage to lay him out atop your sheets – to clamber up beside him, to feel the lines of his body sprawling beneath you. By touch as much as by sight, you locate his legs – which spread beneath your touch, as if in greeting – and trace helpless fingers down their contours til you reach his thighs, where you pause, uncertain.

“Well, pet?” His voice, tinged with amusement, echoes from somewhere higher up the bed – where, you cannot quite see – and a gentle stretch on his part sets lean muscle rolling beneath your hands. “Do you truly need your eyes for this, hm?”

No, you do not, and particularly not since this is for his pleasure and your atonement, not the other way around. You need simply lean forward, align your mouth to your hand, and begin.

The heat of him scorches you no matter where you place your mouth, your lips, your tongue, but you soldier on. Worse, he does not rouse beneath your ministrations, but kicks gently at the small of your back and encourages you lower still when you give no sign of moving from his lap.

 _My lord?_ It worked before; perhaps he will deign to give you direction now? _Are you – pleased?_

“I am not an animal, Tyelpe,” he murmurs, a hand you cannot see burying itself in your hair and pulling you away. “I am no more pleased with you now than I was at the rejection of your ridiculous ring, and that will not change until you stop focusing on my body!”

He is warm, and welcoming, when you slide in, though you have done nothing to prepare him, and so it continues. He does not rouse beneath your hand any more than he did your mouth – nor does he make any sounds of either delight or relief, nor move in any way that would let you know how to give him greater pleasure. He merely lies limp, still and silent save the hand petting through your hair, as you pant and labor above him. It is utterly disconcerting, and made all the more so for the fact that the shining heat continues to rise, and you can see only less and less of him.  

_My lord!_

“I have told you before, Tyelpe – I care not what you do! I would love you as a _god_ , for once, were there not such trammeling in my way. Or. Perhaps?”

There is a benevolent sigh, and his hand loosens, suddenly – slips from your hair. The shimmering heat that has cloaked you, dissipates in the space of a breath, and as your sight returns, blurring and water-stained, you realize that those terrible blank eyes have fallen shut. Around your cock his body falls slack, and before your eyes his beautiful smile slumps right from his face, the muscles collapsing flat and without tension.

With a terrifying certitude, you realize that the body beneath you is dead.

Powers keep and hold you. . .

Except that to call upon Someone Else now would also reveal to Them the blasphemy, the utter travesty, that you are currently committing against all that is right.

_No. . ._

A pressure of air moulds itself to your back, and you cannot hear the words so much as _feel_ them – no longer reverberating in your ears, but materializing somewhere in the crevices between flesh and spirit, where no touch can reach nor sense discern.

_And there you are, there you are! Ah, my Tyelpe, how beautifully you perform for me. Mmm – did I tell you to stop, precious? _

Though your sight has returned, your voice has not; throat and skin alike parched and burned beyond recall. _My lord, please. Please do not ask me to do this thing_. He is not be dead, for he is a god – and as such is far, far more than the dead thing lying wilted beneath you – and he may not be bound by the laws of the world, against all of which this act must revolt, but –  

but _you_ are.

And _you_ are most certainly doing wrong here, even if he is not.

_Again, my Tyelpe – did I ask what silly inanity you thought? Move, my precious. Fuck it as though I were still inside it._

Tears sting at your eyes and scratch your throat. Your burned arms tremble with the effort of holding yourself still, and steady, and lifted off the thing beneath you.

 ** _MOVE_**.

No matter what recompense you owe your god and lover – no matter how beautiful a show of trust between two gods this act might be – you are no god, and you cannot do this.

**_VERY WELL, THEN. THE OTHER WAY IT IS._ **

A tremendous wrench twists in the fore of your head, and your sight contracts – the edges of your vision going dim, then dark, then black. The imperfect range of feeling that you had left in fire-scorched nerves recedes, til you feel nothing at all – neither his cooling flesh beneath your hands, nor the defiled sheets you kneel upon, nor the bangle cool and firm at your foot. Your throat stops up, though you can feel nothing obstructing it; your singe-scorched lungs deflate, like a forge-bellows folded shut at the end of the day. The ever-narrowing scope of the seen flickers once, twice, three times, and without warning your numb arms fold beneath the growing lead that is your own flesh, driving you direct into your lord’s chest beneath you.

You cannot move _trapped trammeled encased_ you cannot draw breath _lāqe atsanë nampë_  

and beneath the roar of the blood in your ears you can hear, far away, a weak retch

_Ah-ah, Tyelpe – we are almost there._

that must be you

_In this, as in anything else you put your damned mind to, you could do so well, my sweet._

as you suffocate

_But once more, my love, but once more. . ._

facedown upon the body of your lord.

_And there you are!_

 

. . . . . . . .

 

You do not stand – for you have no legs – but you occupy and maintain a fixed position, somehow.

Above and behind and about you spreads a night sky such as you have never seen before – and cannot be seeing now, for you have no eyes – a great sprawling tapestry of deepest night peppered with purple stars and awash with gleaming iridescent bands of color

sapphire-turquoise-amethyst-magenta

that roll and ripple as if alive, swelling and contracting in streaks of light - in waves that race and rise and crest, in spikes that build and tower and crash and rise again - all about the you-that-is-not-you. Only beneath you is there nothing, your feet-that-are-not-feet mired in some _thing_ you cannot see, but that is leaden and viscous and vaguely discomfiting nevertheless, when all your senses-that-are-not-senses should be delighting in the surrounding wonder.

_Is this not so much better, my Tyelpe?_

You would know that touch-taste-voice wherever you felt-knew-heard it.

This  _is as it should be_ , this _is what I would show you_!

In this – in what must be his natural place – he is even more radiant then he was when trammeled upon the far shores with you: a towering flame of red and gold radiant enough to outshine even the ribbons of sky-light dancing about you both as he dances-drifts-slides to a shimmering halt before your place, shrinking to match the height from which you discern this new country.

_I have not unmoored you entirely – how tiresome that your spirit must maintain some contact with the flesh, but I will not have you dying upon me, either – so this must be time enough. Tyelpe. Give me your hand._

But what remains of you, here, has no hand which to give him.

 _Tyelpe_.

And no voice of either throat or mind with which to plead, either.

 _TYELPE_.

You would give it to him, you think, if you could. However much, however unwittingly, he could have pained you – back Then, There – you know, instinctively, that here he could do so much worse. And – he is your lover, your keeper, your god, is he not? Do these circumstances not prove that all the more?

**_TYELPE!_ **

But in your innate weakness, your unfitness for this beautiful place to which he has brought you, you cannot obey. The flame of him roars and towers at your silence, returning to its heights of origin, and you wonder, vaguely, if there is some way, here, to block whatever is serving you in place of sight.

The lights are beautiful, but you do not want to see what happens after this.

But he does not touch you.

Instead, there is a great roar of sound – how can you hear it, feel it, if you have not the necessary flesh? – and the night and its lights are drained away like bathwater, pulled forward swift and sure toward some point in the distance, and you along with them, the towering flame of him left shrieking with rage somewhere behind.

And ahead?

Ai, ahead lies a great silver wall, against which the you-that-is-not-you must surely be shattered to pieces

except

a thought, a breath, and you are through it, and ahead. . .

Oh, ahead! Ahead lie clear calm waters and a soft white shore. And beyond stretches a far green country, its hills flowering and fine beneath a grey rain, the clouds already lifting about a swift sunrise, and

it is the fairest thing you have ever seen.

Perhaps, another time, the lack of context or industry or animal life would disconcert you. But at this time, the closer this vision rushes, all you can think is how very - peaceful - it all appears.

 _Please_ , oh, so you can verbalize-think-speak again  _let me rest here, a little while. I will return – will thank and serve as is only fit, it is just – I was not meant to bear such a love as I left behind, and - and I am so weary._

The sand of that white shore is yielding and soft, and the touch of the grey rain, refreshing and cool.

 


	8. Chapter 8

**_yalúmessë_ ** **(n. in locative, "once upon a time")**

 

 

. . .

. . .

. . .

“Tyelpe. Tyelpe?”

. . .

. . .

. . .

“Void take it all, not this nonsense again.  Tyelpe, you fool, if you knew your bodily systems were close to overloading, why do you not just _tell_ me?”

. . .

. . . 

. . .

“Do not even think of leaving me, Tyelpe. Do not you dare. Tyelpe!”

. . .

. . .

. . .

“TYELPE!”

. . .

. . .

. . .

“Open your eyes, damn you. . .”

. . .

. . .

. . .

“Ah, _there_ you are!

. . .

. . .

. . .

“This tiresome roundabout again, hmm. Well, then. My name, dear one, is Annatar, and you are very precious to me. Even more so than the ring you have already cost me, and the two that I still have yet to find or recover. This and these? Oh, you were injured in a tremendous fall into a fire. Terrible business, my sweet, but you _are_ recovering, and I am overjoyed to see it, for – I love you, Tyelpe.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ah yes


End file.
